


The selection (a re-write)

by spitefulwriter



Category: The Selection Series - Kiera Cass
Genre: au i guess, it's very Gay too so that's fun, pretty much just disrespecting canon out of spite, re–write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitefulwriter/pseuds/spitefulwriter
Summary: For thirty-five girls, The Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in the palace and compete for the heart of the gorgeous Prince Maxon.But for Daniela Lopez, It’s so much more. It means she has a chance to change her life, it means she has exclusive access to the most powerful people in her country. It means leaving her home to compete for the crown she wants to destroy. It means being able to serve her country the only way that would make a difference: RebelOf course, if she’s find out she could die. But if dying meant freedom then it would be worth it~I didn't like the selection, but i like the premise, so here is my spiteful re-write





	1. One simple routine

**Author's Note:**

> slight edits were made to chapter one

For two years Daniela Lopez stuck to one simple routine, she would wake up at 5:30 every day, and get to work. If she rushed, she might have time to eat breakfast, but not always. She had to get to her bus on time; if she missed it she would be late, so she often didn’t eat. She always ran to her bus stop, if she was slow, she would have to stand for the whole thirty minute ride, often wedged between two creepy men. So every morning she rushed to get to the bus, she barely had time to kiss her mother goodbye or to prepare a packed lunch. Today was the same as always: wake up; brush your teeth; get dressed; pack you lunch; check your ID card; get out.

Despite the sun still laying low on the horizon, the streets of Tepito were never dark, graffiti dotted the walls of small houses, bright and glowing in vibrant colours, stalls that lined the streets used bright fabrics that absorbed light during the day and glowed at night, the name of each product darkened by glue on stencils. There were screens everywhere, which broadcasted government approved massages: news feeds, ads, and more often than not; laws the people in Tepito had to follow. The news feeds help the same thing as usual: war with new Asia, lower caste gangs arrested, gossip from the capital, constant and unending praise of the government. She ignored most of it. it was usually untrue. And they always skipped over the most important news. When they talk about gangs its usually just slander to set the upper crusts against them, the royals are treated like perfect angels who care about the people. Hey never even talk about the lower caste rights movements. It was laughable.

But there was no time to laugh; she needed to get to work.

She waved at the owners of the few stalls that were open, but never bought anything. Once she bought an apple from a fruit stall, and then couldn’t afford the trip to work, because she was a few dollars short. So she never bought anything in the morning. Above her breaking new flashes on a vibrant violent screen that hovered above her, she looked down. The bright colours were supposed to grab your attention, but she was tired and didn’t want to think about the news. If it was breaking news, she was sure it meant people were dead, or more soldiers on the warfront went missing, or another city was taken by new Asia. She was too busy trying to survive; the news would just stress her out.

She got to her bus on time, boarder, and took out her ID card to pay the bus fare she tensed as a large red seven flashed on the bus meter screen, and relaxed as the red seven turned green; allowing her access on the bus. The bus was long and mostly empty, there maybe two or three seat taken. She positioned herself to sit in of the front seats, they were less worn out than the back seats, and it was easier to get of the bus from the front.

“HEY!” The bus driver yelled at her, even though she sat directly behind him, “Get your ass in the back, _Kor,_ I don’t want people like you contaminating the front,”

She groaned and went to sit in the back.

One of the many rules that flashed across the hover screens was this: if you are a six, seven or eight you sit in the back of the bus, or the back of a restaurant, or the back of the theatre. If you were a part of the lower caste you couldn’t exist in many spaces, by virtue of being poor, you are violating the rights of the upper crusts. Never mind the lower castes never had rights to being with.

Dani sighed as she put her head against the cold window of the bus. Life as a seven wasn’t easy. There were certain places she couldn’t live in, certain jobs she couldn’t apply for, certain things she couldn’t buy, but she’d never be able to afford them anyways.

The bus ride was about thirty minutes, in that time she let herself rest her eyes, the rhythmic humming of the hover–bus fans lulling her to sleep. But she jolted awake at every stop, and her rest became less soothing the more people crowded the bus. The front of the bus was practically empty, but sixes sevens and eights had to crowd the back.

Getting off the bus was a welcomed relief; she wasn’t pushed to the window in the back of a stuffy bus anymore. She was outside in downtown Mexico City, the sun finally rising, its faint orange glow lighting up glass windows like fire. She took in a deep breath, taking in the fresh air of the city, nothing like the smell of smoke and dust in her neighbourhood; it was amazing what a little distance could change. Now it was time to walk. She always kept her pace slow during her walk to work, she had a good thirty minutes to get there, and it was only twenty minutes away, she let herself wander a bit. She watched hovercrafts fly by. Hydrogen powered crafts left behind mist that covered passer byes, electric cars left behind a stream of light and soft humming. Solar cars seemed to heat up the air around them, often evaporating the mist hydrogen crafts left behind. She stared at the buildings, Mexico city had much older buildings built centuries ago, and merely improved slightly, they were old stone buildings, reinforced with steel and bulletproof glass. There were more screens attached to the buildings reporting more news, mostly painting an inaccurate vision of neighbourhoods like Tepito, and showing government propaganda. They did not show any rules, the tourist didn’t need them, they were usually rich upper crusts, and they had all their rights. Floating signs lead said tourists to the most attractive destinations; the colonial buildings, ancient cities, museums exploiting stolen artefacts, and the prettiest poor neighbourhoods; the ones that had the prefect humble peasant aesthetic, but none of the nitty gritty realities of poverty like hunger, or struggling to provide basic necessities to your family.

She walked through a shopping sector, a variety of stores lined the streets: brand name stores, toyshops, book stores, etcetera. Across all of this was a dingy shop, the walls around it were dirty with grease and dust, a couple of stray tires leaned against the door, ad broken down car sat in the opened garage. Large neon sign flashed a million bright colours; _Julio’s Garage_ , but a couple letters were; lit so instead it spelled: _Lio’ rage_. She stared longingly at the better-looking shops across the street, they looked clean, and managed, and maybe if she worked at literally any other store, they would give her a discount. But they wouldn’t hire her, she tried applying, but the name brand clothing stores didn’t accept employees of any cast lower than five, and all the other stores simply rejected her. She knew it was because she was a seven.

Julio did not actually run the garage, and garage was an inaccurate description for the shop. The owner must have been a descendant of whoever Julio was: Juan Jose, and the ‘garage’ was really the place where you could dump anything broken and have it fixed or sold if you don’t pay enough. There started with fixing hovercrafts and other modes of transportation, but then Dani took on rogue assignments and fixed anything for cheep.

She walked in with ten minutes to spare; ten minutes of blissful silence without Juan Jose screaming at her to work.

She wasn’t alone; behind the counter was a close friend of hers, Bruno, a tall well built boy who was only a year older than her. He was her boss’s son, and thus was a five. A much more privileged caste, and you could tell. He didn’t have dark circles under his eyes, and he wasn’t skinny from starvation, he was a lean good looking guy with warm tawny skin, a nice smile and bright green eyes, which were surently scanning a tabloid intently. The cover of it featured and attractive dark haired model, posing in a ball gown; Must be a new upper crust fashion trend, or award season, Dani never knew, she barely paid attention to those things.

She walked up to the counter and rang the service bell several time. Bruno jumped, almost dropping his magazine.

“Hey Dani! Didn’t see you there!” he said shoving the magazine under the counter.

“What are you reading?” She asked, trying to lean over the counter to get a peak at the magazine her hastily put way,

“Nothing,”

“If it were nothing you wouldn’t have hid it,”

He didn’t say anything for a second, then; “you know a two left their extremely expensive diesel car in the garage,”

“Sounds like a lot of work, and expensive,”

“Whoever fixes it first gets the tip,”

She left to go find the very expensive diesel car. Unfortunately someone was already under it, and working on it.

“Damn it El!”

Elena slid out grinning from ear to ear, her leather–brown skin covered in oil splotches. Her overalls were practically stained all black, and her arms looked like they could never be scrubbed clean, she’d already been working on the car for hours.

“You should come in earlier,” she said

“I hate you,” Elena was an eight, the lowest and poorest class, they often lived in slums or abandoned buildings, Elena lived in an apartment downtown, in a building that used to be a hotel, but now hosted a bunch of eight families that couldn’t afford rent, it was a ten minute walk from work. Dani walked around the diesel car, it looked like an early 2010s model, white as snow. It was chunkier than the sleek hovercrafts, but it definitely had a vintage aesthetic o it. the car didn’t take much of the garage’s space, she could easily walk around it to get to the various worktables that were pushed against the wall. She pulled up a chair and sat at one, giving one longing look at the car before getting to work. The table was covered in old robotic parts, the day before, they were sold and old robot, it was an ancient bot that was overworked and broken down, it appeared to be a cleaning unit, their job was to fix it, and make it worth twice what they bought it for. Bruno would have better at this job, he was a natural programmer, while Dani specialised in mechanics, but alas, Bruno was the boss’s favourite, and Elena tool the cooler job.

Twenty minutes into work, their boss walked in, he took a couple minutes out of his day to yell at them about being lazy labourers, undeserving of their apprenticeship, and threatened to fire them or cut their pay if they didn’t make him money. He told Elena to go broom the whole shop, and dumped more work on Dani’s worktable, telling her to re–build a drone, and make an android. He then patted Bruno on the head praising his son, and loudly stating that he’d prefer tamer, fairer workers. Then left. Elena sighed; she picked up a broom and left the garage to broom the whole shop. Bruno sat where Dani worked, trying to teach her how to program her nearly finished robot. When Juan was finally gone, Dani reached for the radio. Everyday their boss came to yell at them, then he went to the bar to drink away his sorrows, and came home, tired and drunk, and slept for the rest of the day. In that time, the fun really began. She punched in the numbers for her favourite radio station, and turned the volume up. Tessa Tramble played a cover of an early 200s song; Toxic.

Work was hell most of the time, Dani and Elena were overworked and underpaid, but there were moments where the music was loud and they were given a large promising project, and they got a little more out of life as usual.

Dani sang along to Toxic as Bruno tried to show her programming language and all the digital stuff behind robots, it wasn’t the most effective study technique, but it was fun. Elena slid in, joining in with the singing, and dancing with the broom. Bruno couldn’t help but laugh as Elena danced wildly, acting out the song and flipping her long braided hair. They snag and danced, and worked all at once. Elena got back to the car, and Dani abandoned the programing to stand on one of the tables to sing.

Their fun was interrupted by news. The radio station was taken over by a government broadcast.

“We are on the eve of an important day, the Royal heir—“ Dani shut off the radio immediately.

“It could be important,” Bruno said

“Or it could be more bull crap,” Dani responded, “I’m tired of the news, I know its important to be informed, but we all know half of this shit is fake, and the real stuff is depressing” gang violence, news about the warfront, diseases spreading in the slums, it was a lot to deal with, especially since most of this news would affect her and her family directly.

“But what if they are actually reporting news? Maybe they’re taking the independence party seriously,” Elena suggested

they all laughed, the news never reported about the independence party.

In a world where people were assigned castes, and their rights were determined by how high or how your number was, of course there were rebel groups. There were small gangs mostly; but the independence party was the larges and most powerful group that opposed the government. They fought against everything the government stood for, their main goal was the eradication of the nation of Illea; the country they all lived in. they mostly operated in the south, in the provinces of Mexico and other surrounding provinces. There were rumours that they’d taken control of the Caribbean islands, and that they governed themselves, finally free of illean control. As a seven, Dani would nave be able to travel outside of the province of Mexico to find out, it was too expensive, and she was legally restricted to certain regions of Ilea, so she would never find out if the rumours were true. She could ask her superiors in the party, but they never gave straight answers.

They went back to work, playing music, but still focusing on their assignments. Dani eventually started to work with Elena on the car, they’d agree to split the tip 60/40; Elena needed the money more, so she got the bigger half.

 

By the end of their shift, the car was fixed, it could run properly, without sputtering or making alarming noise, the heater worked, the air-conditioning worked, the radio was tuned to their favourite station, it was now softly playing classical music. Bruno finished programming Dani’s robot; the cleaning unit could now cook, clean, watch and feed your pets, and act as a mini home security system. If they sold it to a gullible enough upper crust they could get triple the amount it cost to buy it.

All in a days work.

The owner of the car arrived, and demanded his diesel car. It took several minutes of flat out lying to convince him to fork over more money than the car was actually worth. They claimed there was an extra fee for fixing vehicles that couldn’t run according to law; they claimed they need more money for buying old out-dated parts, and that there was a fee for finishing the car in one day. They ended the day with an outrageous check and a generous tip.

Dani looked at the tip jar, now full with pennies, and bills they coaxed out of hesitant buyers. She almost felt bad for their last customer, who was swindled out of a large amount of money. Then she remembered he was a two, and all that remorse went away; he could afford to spend all his money.

“You guys want me to give you extra for all the money we stole from that guy,?” Bruno asked, they were hanging out at the from of the store, Bruno sat in his usual chair, where he sat to greet customers, Dani and Elena sat on the desk, looking back every few seconds to make sure their boss never showed up.

“No, your dad would kill you if he found out!” Elena exclaimed, she lightly kicked the chair as if trying to get Bruno to see how stupid is proposition was

“I’ll be fine, you need to money,” Bruno insisted

“We need you alive, Bruno,” Dani said, “if your dad kills you, he’ll actually have to watch the shop and…” she paused, let out an exaggerated gaps and continued, “ _supervise us_ ”

Elena shivered comically, “see, live on, keep you money, we’ll just take the tip jar as always,”

“Split it three ways,” Dani added,

“Two ways, you guys need the money—“

“It’s only fair!” Elena interrupted, she jumped down from the desk, “your shift is almost over, go, be free chickens,”

“You should be going home too,” Bruno said, “your shift is over,”

“Yeah, but if I work overtime I could get more money,” that was a lie, Bruno and Dani both knew that Juan Jose was never obligated to pay overtime, she just didn’t wan to go home. The never knew why, they only knew where she lived, but have never visited. Dania always wondered what at homemade suffering Juan Jose’s drunken verbal abuse a better option.

“You could come with us; hang out,” Bruno suggested

“Yeah! I have an hour before I need to take the bus home, we could all go and see the touristy crap upper crusts love!”

“I’m fine here you guys, go,” she shooed them away and walked back to the garage.

Neither Dani or Bruno said anything, they didn’t know why Elena stayed at work so late, they both wanted to do something— _anything_ —to help, but like always Elena brushed off their concerns.

Bruno sighed, “man I wish we could help,”

“Me too,”

Whatever they were going to talk about was interrupted by Bruno’s phone vibrating. He checked it, and saw who called and messages the followed. It was an unknown number, but the texts were familiar. Short alerts describing a time and place in code. The last text said: delete soon—IP

They both knew what it meant: the independence party needed them.

 

Dani had been a part of the rebel group since the Centro Historico massacre. They news would call it an uprising, and called it a representative of the illean government winning against any blossoming rebellion/ she was ten years old at the time, and narrowly avoided the violence, thanks to her mother. She dragged Dani and her sister away from the Centro, when protests began, and banned her from watching TV until the massacre was over. The Independence party had just lost an election, despite the people clearly wanting the IP candidate to win, the new Governor of Mexico was an upper crust from northern Illea: A rich fat cat who was still in power seven years later. Members of the IP and of the public went to Centro Historico to protest, the police came, and all hell broke loose. Dani didn’t remember the details, but she did remember the sound of guns, and the blood on the streets still being cleaned up later, she also knew that a curfew was put into place days later.

When she learned about the IP she sought them out secretly, and didn’t stop looking for them until she met Bruno, and they joined up on the same day. They both had minor roles in the rebellion, they belonged to a small rebel cell that really only caused trouble for the governor. They stole from the governor and his cronies, they occasionally disrupted his speeches, every one in a while they’d actually cause some chaos but it was always minor. Dani had always felt like she could do more, like anyone who was in a lower caste, she hated Illea, and longed for her province to be independent again. And every little bit helped.

 

Dani and Bruno gathered their things and left quickly, Bruno left a note for his father saying he was out with friends.

Technically it wasn’t a lie; all his friends were a part of the IP.


	2. Los Pinos

Most upper crusts lived in lux spacious condo complexes. Glass building always hovered a few feet off the ground, casting shadows over older homes. All the complexes lived within a few feet of each other, existing in their own world away from the common folk in Mexico City. The governor of Mexico however had the luxury of living in his own mansion; Los Pinos. It wasn’t far from down town Mexico City, but it was secluded, located in Chapultepec Forest and surrounded by the pine trees it was named after. Dani never got to visit Los Pinos; as a seven, she couldn’t visit most government buildings, especially government residences.

This was her first time near Los Pinos, and she was giddy over the idea that the first time she visited such a privileged household was also the day she robbed it of all its information.

Getting close to Los Pinos was easy; the Chapultepes Forest was a public park, they bended in easily with young Upper crusts and middle Class _manties,_ when they snuck past security checkpoints. The security was shamefully weak, Bruno managed to take apart and ID card scanner connect it to his tablet and take down the security cameras, motion sensors, and automated door locks. Somewhere there was a security guard panicking, wonder how they could sound the alarm when the alarm was disabled.

Dani waltzed through a servant’s entrance, Bruno, and a few other members of the IP behind her. She knew some but not all, there was the self proclaimed “leader of the youth Independence initiative” Julian, there was a boy named Miguel, but she didn’t know much about him, just that he was tall, stronger than most bodybuilders and good with makeshift explosives. The others’ Identities were hidden behind masks, scarves and hoods; the less they knew about each other, the better. The only thing that separated one person from another were the weapons, jewellery, or decorative patches they wore. Dani herself had a baseball bat, she would have gladly exchanged it for a gun, or a Taser, but as a seven she couldn’t get a permit, most gun stores wouldn’t let her in, and the black market was something foreign to her. So she was stuck with a bat she found in an alley.

 

The objective was clear; Dani and Bruno were supposed to find the governor’s private office and take whatever information they could find, and if they had time, plant a bug. Julian lead the rest of the group and they acted like robbers, they would loot the house, take the attention away from stole files, have the news and the governor focus on his destroyed house and the destruction the IP left behind.

Julian cover his face in a clown mask, He pulled a pistol from his jacket, walked out of the kitchen into the hallway and fire several shots in the air.

BANG BANG BANG

There was a scream, a clattering of dishes, running, Julian charged forward and the rest of the group followed, leaving Dani and Bruno in the kitchen by themselves. They waited a few more moments, Bruno took the time to check his backpack, Dani readjusted her mask, and ran her fingers over the tiled floors, waiting.

BANG

That was her cue to leave.

Dani ran in the opposite direction that Julian went, if everything went according to plan, the guards would be focusing their attention on him, and not her and Bruno. They navigated the maze that was Los Pinos, rounding each corner until the private residence looked like an office. The walls changed from honey coloured, to bleach whit, the hardwood floors were now covered by red carpet.

In theory Dani should know where the office was, she had memorised the floor plan. In reality she had no idea what she was doing. She continuously kicked down doors that vaguely looked official, hoping for access to the governor’s office, She had stepped into the governor’s room, his children’s playroom, his wife’s private studio, a closet full of suits, _another_ closet full of suits and at each door, she got more frustrated. She was wasting time, soon outside guards would find her and Bruno and they would be dead. She could almost hear military boots stomping the ground and getting louder with every second, it was that or her heart beating and trying to break through her ribs.

The last door was the most ornate one, beyond it was a wall; it was literally the only place the office could be. There was an electronic lock, but there was no time from Bruno to flex his hacking skills to allow easy access. She hit the glass panel with her bat and kicked down the door. Finally they entered the governor's office

Bruno went straight to the computer at the centre of the room. He opened his bag and took out various devices; a tablet, wires, a smaller computer, a wireless console, and so on, he set it all up, connecting it to the governor’s large computer, and began typing away. Meanwhile Dani began destroy the office. She started with checking file cabinets, she took whatever the most recent reports, they detailed troop movements bills about to be turned into laws, statistics on the people of Mexico. Then she scattered the rest, violently pulling out the cabinet dumping the contents on the floor, and grabbing other files just to confuse the governor.

“Why would anyone want a picture of that hideous, arrogant, prick?” she said as she smashed the glass covering an oil painting of King Clarkson. She scowled at the King’s bright charming smile and captivating brown eyes.

“Only the people kissing his—“ Bruno paused, he tore his gaze away from the computers and looked at Dani with a confused frown, “do you hear that?”

There were heavy footsteps approaching them quicker and louder than before. So she wasn’t being paranoid.

“Oh shit,” Dani went to the door, and saw two guards with heavy armour and arm-canons sprinting towards her. She slammed the door shut, and regretted kicking it down, as it bounced open.

“What is it?” Bruno’s eyebrows were now pinched together in apprehension.

“Oh nothing,” Dani hurriedly grabbed nearby furniture and pushed them to the door,

“Doesn’t look like nothing,”

“Nothing you should worry about, how is the download going?” She had had back pressed up against the bookcase as she tried to move it to the door.

Bruno gave her a doubtful look, and sighed.

“I just need a minute or two, then I’ll have all of the governor’s intel,”

“Good, good…can you start packing, I have a feeling we’ll need a quick exit,”

The guards started bashing the door, each hit felt harder than the last.

“I wonder why,”

Dani’s clever response was to stick her tongue out at him.

“Seriously Bruno, we need to get out fast,” A guard shot at the door, blasting a hole through the top of the door, Dani gestured upwards, illustrating her point, And Bruno finally started to prepare to leave.

In moment like These, Dani wished for more advanced weapon than a bat, and cursed herself for never trying to build her own gun, or picking one off the street, Julian’s pistol came from a junk yard, she could have easily gotten one if she wasn’t afraid.

The guards kept shooting the door; blasts of hot red energy burned through the door and were starting to affect the furniture covering it. Dani’s back felt hot from the blasts.

“fuck,” she hissed, “Bruno, get behind me, run the second they’re distracted.”

Bruno obeyed, gathering the last of his items and running to her side. The guards kept on shooting at the door, slowly destroying the furniture and burning large holes in the door. She counted each shot in her head; arm canon would need to cool down after twenty blasts, they would stop working for a minute if used in rapid succession. The guards were quickly overheating their canons.

The door burst open, the melted fragment of furniture flying; the two guards ran in, a left arm raised, covered in metal, with a large circular opening where a fist would be and their right harm above it. Dani raised her bat, and the guards tried to shoot her but both arm canons refused to shoot, they were smoking from the rapid-fire use. Dani swung at the first, successfully hit him in the side of his head, he crumple on the floor. The second guard met her bat with his arm-canon, she ducked as he swung at her, and kicked his knee. The guard fell to his knees, and she hit him again this time in the head, this time he fell face forwards.

She stared in disbelief at the fallen guards. She had her bat raised above her head, like she was anticipating for them to stand up and attack.

“Dani, stop being an idiot and _run_ ,” Bruno said, halfway out the door.

Right, her luck would run out soon enough.

 

They found the rest of the group in the main hall, duffle bags full of valuables slung over their shoulders, and the staff tied up in a corner, seemingly unharmed.

“Let’s go!” Dani yelled, she ran out the same way they came in. Guards were running towards them, the cowering servants were finally getting up. Julian order for the rest to leave anything they hadn't already gotten and to get out. Julian shot at the approaching guards, missing every shot, but at least they hesitated. Dani ran, barely containing her laughter, whatever they had would help bring down the royal family, whatever they stole could buy them all a better life, at least for a while. she threw off her mask when she got into the truck that brought the there, and screamed at the guard who were too far await catch up.

" _vive la resistencia!_ fuck Illea!”


	3. The Selection

Chapter 3: The selection

The best thing about IP were the parties.  
An old barely functioning radio played century old hits, someone had hooked make shift speakers to the radio, letting the music drown out the sound of screaming teenagers. They danced around a bonfire, burning whatever they couldn’t sell or use. Dani was one of the loudest shouting along with the music painfully off key, stomping her boots to the drums and shaking her head to the rhythm, feeling the weight of the world melt off her shoulders. She danced and flirting with whichever girl passed by. They spent the evening relishing a little bit of freedom, masks off, weapons discarded, carefree and reckless.   
She should go home, she should sleep early, she knew she would hate herself in the morning, but it was Saturday night.  
She took a break from her stomping and collapsed on the ground next to Bruno. He passed her a bottle of something brown.  
“All in a days work,” she sighed, she took a sip of the mystery beverage and scowled as it burned her throat.  
“Yes, robbing our governor’s home, and burning useless artefacts, is amazing, productive, work,” Bruno said, passing her a bottle, “We are really model citizens”  
“Indeed,” she took another sip, “Ugh this tastes like my cooking,” she threw it into the fire, the bottle shattered some of its contents spilled into the fire. It exploded in heat and size, the crowd cheered.  
“Then why drink it?”  
“Because you gave it to me and I love suffering,” she grinned, “what was that thing anyways?”  
“Cheep booze someone stole from their cousin probably, I think metal face over there brought it,” He pointer out into the crowd to a girl glancing her way, with an inviting smile, vibrant blue hair and interesting piercings on her face. She glanced away, only to look back at Dani once more.  
“Maybe I should thank her,”  
“I think she wants you too,” Bruno chuckled, “but you have curfew,”  
“I have a good hour before I have to leave, and you haven’t danced yet,”  
“I don’t want to dance,”  
“But you’re gonna,” Dani grabbed his arm and pulled him over to where the rest of the group was dancing, right where the speakers sent vibrations straight to your heart and you could here every instrument with painful clarity. Bruno protested, but with a smile, he rolled his eyes and called her an idiot but spun when she asked him too.   
Nights like these were rare. Sundays were her only days off, and they were spent at church, with family, praising a god that abandoned them and still praying for salvation. So she would get home early, sleep in and slog through the next day, just as her mother said she should. Her mother would kill her if she knew about the party.  
Her mother wasn’t here now.  
Dania eventually managed to shove Bruno towards a vibrant looking group:  
“Have you met Bruno? He’s the hacker, the whole reason we’re celebrating, basically,”   
Bruno did not look back as the group carried him away with conversation about politics and technology; his two favourite subjects. Dani, used this as an opportunity to approach the blue haired girl. She eyed her across the bonfire, and winked. The blue haired girl gestured towards a quieter spot; an intact building behind an abandoned car. With an eager grin Dani met her there.

Dani was lost in the best sense of the word: lost in her eyes lost in her words, lost and continuously even more lost. The blue haired girl was captivating and funny. She caught bits an pieces of her past through the wisps of conversations held between kisses. Her name was Penelope, everyone called her Penny. her parents somehow managed to escape Cuba to find another slightly larger prison. She got her blue hair on a dare and contemplated a matching tattoo, she was a story teller and an entertainer, she wanted a cat. Dani also traded her own past for more kisses. Bruno had to physically wretch Dani away from Penny to pull her out of her romantic Daze.  
“What time is curfew for sevens?” he asked   
“Nine o’clock, why?” Dani still couldn’t take her eye’s away from penny  
“What time is it?”  
She read her watch and felt her stomach drop: 9:30  
“Shit, shit, why didn’t you tell me?” Now she was fully aware of the realities of her life, and he was fully aware that there was no ware for her to get home half an hour ago.  
“I couldn’t find you!”  
“You should have—I—“ she could have screamed. It was her own fault, for being so distracted, for daring to pretend she could do what she wanted, now she was going to get arrested, “I need to run,”  
“You can stay at my place if you need; less police,”  
“My house is closer,” Dani, sighed, “I’ll see you Monday,”

Normally she would take a bus, cutting her travel time in half and allowing her a somewhat comfortable ride, but after curfew she wasn’t legally allowed to be outside. Her card would be declined; the police would be notified; she would be sent to prison; she’d die a day later for having no gang affiliation.  
She ran through the ruins of Mexico City, right in the Eight’s slums. The buildings appeared abandoned; they crumbled at the weight of nothing, walls were covered in moss and stray vines grew in cement and brick. Roofs had either been covered in tin or completely blown off; many older homes were shrouded in fabrics so old that they lost their colour. Some buildings had been reduced to their foundations, others somehow had been added onto. Brick was stacked on brick, then stacked on with metal, creating small apartments where one person could sleep in. There were old diesel vehicles parked in the middle of the road, some were clearly inhabited, their backs were open and smoke was spilling out, or you could see an attempt at decoration: the glowing fabrics seen in markets, or plants tended around the vehicle. This route home had always made Dani’s skin crawl, many of the poorest neighbourhoods were ruined, habited only because it were cheap. They were places that were never rebuilt, the places that were bombed and attacked the most, many felt like mass graves, especially at night, when the markets were closed, and citizens had to shut themselves inside. The only thing lighting her way were broken street lamps and glowing graffiti.  
There were a few close calls with the police, occasionally an officer would bother to check out a dirty alley or shine their flashlight over ruined buildings, Dani managed to avoid being caught by hiding behind a crumbling wall, or by throwing something and running in the other direction.

She collapsed on the floor, her back pressing against the door of her apartment. She was home, she was safe, and made it just as the hourly curfew check ended. The officer didn’t notice her slip in as he went to investigate the floor above her. Her heart hammered against her ribs, she could hear her pulse in her ear. She was dangerously close to arrest; she couldn’t even call it a victory.  
Her mother sat in the living room, hands folded in prayer.  
“Mama, I’m home,” Dani said, trying to be light while gasping from breath.  
Her mother turned to Dani, and she expected blazing eyes and to be on the receiving end of profanity and a long glorious speech about responsibility; Michelle Gahima-Lopez was famous for her speeches.  
Instead Michelle began to tear up, she shook her head, went up to Dani and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.  
“mana-yesu-chritsu—“Michelle continued speaking in a language Dani could never understand: Kinayrwanda. She knew enough to know that her mother giving a silent prayer of thanks.  
“Where were you!” Michelle demanded.  
Dani hesitated, she hadn’t prepared a good enough excuse for missing curfew, she couldn’t even use the IP as an excuse; Michelle thought they were trouble and demanded Dani never associated with them. Luckily her mother decided now was the time for a lecture:  
“Do you know what could happen?”  
Yes  
“You know being a seven means you can’t stay out, mami, you are smarter than this! There is a curfew and you cannot afford to get caught!”  
Michelle continued lecturing Dani, it was the same speech she heard her whole life: You can’t go out, you can’t skip work, you can’t be late, you can’t go here, you can’t talk to them. Be carful or die, be carful because we need you be careful because I love you.   
She was tired of that speech but listened anyways, Her mother was only looking out for her, Dani was lucky that her mother cared at all. She thought of Elena, who she doubted ever spoke to her parents, and Bruno, who’s father was only present two times a day.  
“I’m sorry,” Dani said, cutting Michelle off in the middle of her speech, “I was careless, stupid and I got distracted, I promise I’ll never do it again. I’ll even do the dishes for you for however long you want to make it up to you!”  
any other Day interrupting Michelle meant a longer speech about respect, Tonight she only looked at her daughter with a sad smile, and hugged her again.  
“I love you,”  
“I love you to, mama,”   
“And I will take you up on that offer, you can do the dishes for two months,” even with her mother’s face turned away from her, Dani knew she was smiling. Dani grimaced; she shouldn’t have given her the idea.  
Michelle finally let go of Dani, and kissed her forehead.   
“You are still in trouble. But we will talk about this after church. Now go to bed,”  
Fair enough. Dani walked towards the room she shared with her sister.  
“And you can call your new grilfreind tomorrow, after church,”  
Dani froze  
“You have lipstick on, and I know we don’t purple lipstick,”  
Dani furiously rubbed at her mouth and went to bed, as Michelle chuckled behind her

“DANIIIIIII”  
Dani buried herself into her blanket, covering her ears with a pillow and groaned. Maria was determined to bother her and began shaking her vigorously.  
“Tugende, you need to wake up,”  
“I’m sleeping,” It was Sunday, the only day she had off from work, the only day where she could get a decent amount of sleep with no chores or work to bother her. This was her day  
“Mama said so,”  
Dani got up immediately  
“Mama,” Dani whined, entering the livingroom/kitchen, “It’s Sunday and church is at noon,”  
Michelle sat on their single long couch with Dani’s younger brother, Jorge, on her lap. Jorge looking up at her wide eyes wide with excitement, gap toothed grin lighting up his face, He was practically bouncing on Michelle’s lap, ready to burst. Michelle clutched a piece of paper in her hand and the TV remote in the other, a news broadcast was muted, yet the screen was still glowing and Michelle’s eye’s were glued to it.  
“to bad, this is important,” Michelle waved her over, showing her the paper in her hand, “read it!”  
Dani held the paper, the feeling of excitement seemed to be rubbing on to her by her mother. Everyone looked over her shoulder as she read:

To the house Gahima–Lopez  
The recent census has confirmed that a single woman between the ages of sixteen and twenty currently resides in your home. We would like to make you aware of an upcoming opportunity to honour the great nation of Illea  
Our beloved prince, Maxon Schreave, is coming of age this month. As he ventures into this new part of his life, he hopes to move forward with a partner, to marry a true Daughter of Illea. If your eligible daughter, sister, or charge is interested in possibly becoming the bride of Prince Maxon and the adored princess of Illea, please fill out the online form found on the Illean government’s website, and sign the enclosed form and return it to your local Province Services Office. Participants will be drawn at random to meet the prince. Participants will be housed at the lovely Illea Palace in Washington DC for the duration of their stay. The families of each participant will be generously compensated for their service to the royal family.  
“It’s time for the selection,” Dani said breathlessly. A million thoughts began to run through her head, this was a huge opportunity, something that could save her family; this could change their lives.  
The selection was a competition, thirty-five girls from all over Illea would be ‘randomly’ chosen to live in the place for one year. Through a series of competitions, interviews, and lessons, the least desirable girls would be weeded out of the group, and kicked out of the palace, and those who remained had a better chance at staying in the castle. The whole thing was televised, it was eerily similar to the old “reality shows” her mother had recorded. The day–to day life of a selected would be closely monitored, and the people would vote on their favourite. The winner got to marry the crown prince of Illea. If Dani won, she could feed her family for a lifetime, send her sister to school, and give Jorge all the toys in the world.  
Only if she was selected of course.  
She wasn’t alive for the last selection, but Michelle told the story of her neighbour who was selected. She never came back. Her family was once poor and lived in the slums, but when she was selected, her family received enough money to move into a better neighbourhood, and she ended up marrying some rich upper crust, was able to move up a caste, set her family off for life.

There were three things Dani wanted most in the world: the first was her province’s liberation from Illea. It wasn’t always a province; it used to be the united Mexican states. Now it was a small under funded, neglected province in Illea, its culture and people constantly disrespected and abused for the sake of upper crust northerners. The second was for the caste system to disappear. Illea had its people put into castes, Dani couldn’t imagine why, but she did know that your skin colour correlated with your caste. She was a mixed Mexican/Rwandese girl with skin a dark as rich soil, and a seven, only one caste above the bottom. Because of her caste she lived in one of the poorest, crime ridden neighbourhoods in Mexico city, no other neighbourhood would take her family in, because of her caste, her boss at works wasn’t obligated to pay her a living wage, so she crammed in as many hours as she could, but Michelle still had to work two jobs and her sister still had to work after school. Because of her caste, she couldn’t even freely use the internet, her family had to pay extra to go on certain websites, so far, they could only use government controlled sites. The last thing she wanted was the most realistic and impossible dream: to have enough money to live comfortably. If her home was independent and the castes were gone this would be a more achievable dream, but unfortunately living in Illea made it hard to survive.   
The Selection was an opportunity to change that. She didn’t have to win and marry the prince, she only had to stay for a while and get as much money as possible, and then she could use her upgraded social status to marry rich. Hopefully an old politician, and she could use her influence to change things.  
It was a lovely dream, but it was sill a dream, she had to get past the lottery first.

“So are we rich then?” Maria was squinting at the TV, trying to read the headlines gliding by, “can I get my own bed?”  
“If Maria gets a bed I want one too!” Jorge got off of Michelle’s lap and stood on the couch “I want to have my own bed and jump on it whenever I want!” he started Jumping, Dani had to pull him down before her Mother’s Glare vaporised him. she held tight as he squirmed for the couch,  
“You aren’t jumping on anything Jorge,” Michelle said, “and we are already rich—“  
Dani and Maria finished the sentence, having heard it over and over for their entire lives, “—We are rich in love,”  
“But I mean money rich, Like Selena, in my school!” Maria said, “she moved because her mom married a five and now she has her own room and goes to a school with better toilets!”  
the amount of hope in Maria’s voice was heartbreaking. She complained, yet all she wanted was her own bed. Dani desperately wanted to provide it for her. If she could she would have Given Maria her own castle, yet a few dollars an hour could barely pay rent.  
“It’s not a guarantee, guys, I might not be picked, even if I am I might not stay long enough to make money,” despite this, Dani had hope.  
she took a look at the enclosed form, she flipped through them, it was all written in legal jargon; contracts about cameras and responsibility and making sure you don’t engage in illegal activity. She sat at the dining table in the kitchen; she found a pen to start signing each form.  
“Of course you’ll last long, mami” Michelle wrapped her arms around her daughter, squeezing Dani as she tried to sign the forms, “You are beautiful and charming, and the prince would be a fool not to marry you,”  
“Only because I got it from you,” she smiled up at her mom; Michelle hugged her tighter.   
“Exactly,” Michelle winked, “act like me, and you’re definitely going to win, right munchkins?”  
Dani looked like a younger version of her mother: the shared the same rectangular face and high cheekbones, they had the same lips, and the same round eyes. Bu years of work exhausted Michelle, she had permanently dark bags under her eyes, bony callused hands and deep wrinkles from work. But she held her head high defiantly, and smiled twice as bright as the sun. There was a phot of her mother on the fridge, from when she was younger, and Dani’s father wasn’t at the warfront, she radiated life, she carried a young Dani in her arms and laughed.  
Dani saw that energy take form in righteous fury, her mother had blazing eyes that Maria inherited, and a stubborn chin that Jorge had. But every once in a while she was chatty and appeared happy, traits that passed on to her children, but that she rarely exhibited.   
“Yeah! Dani has cool hair like a lion!” Jorge said, he then frowned and patted his head, it was shaved because of rumours of lice in his class, “ I want lion hair,”  
Michelle laughed, she always laughed loud, no matter how small the joke was.  
“When you learn to brush it, Dani is lucky I don’t cut her hair,” She lightly tugged at Dani’s hair, “now genda Maria, Jorge, you have Sunday school,”

There were a lot of forms. Dani underestimated the power of legal jargon. She slogged through reading each form, and began to regret it as she felt time creep by, guaranteeing that she would be miserable the next day for missing her break. Michelle joined Dani after she had found a trusted neighbour to send Maria and Jorge off to Sunday school. She sat next to her daughter, and double-checked each form.  
“So you don’t sell your soul to the devil by accident,” Michelle claimed,  
She made the process even longer. At the very least Michelle prepared small snack for both of them: fraises con crema and mizuzu. It was a rare treat; Michelle rarely used condensed milk and plaintains.   
It was early afternoon when they finished carefully going through each form, The sun was high on the horizon, a way of heat began to set in. Dani felt hot and irritated she desperately wanted to go outside, cool off in the shade with a friend, or call Penny. It took Dani over an hour of negotiation to convince Michelle to let her skip church. Michelle loved Church, it was a piece of her old life that she could carry with her openly in Mexico; everyone was catholic. Church was also the home of her entire social life, which meant staying behind hours after service and having to watch the sun go down and Monday approach knowing nothing else would get done. They have this conversation often; Micelle was determined to get Dani into Heaven, Dani simply wanted to wander for a day.  
Today Dani won.  
Michelle was about to leave; she called one more time to offer Dani a chance to go to church with her  
“They have snacks! I know you love Mama Isabella’s cooking,” she sang  
That was when they hear a knock.   
The knock was in an oddly specific rhythm, when no one opened the door, the same odd patterned knock sounded.  
Dani knew that knock.  
Shit  
She went to the door before her mother left, she only opened it a little bit, so she could stick her head out. Julian stood in front of the door, smirking.  
“I told you not at my house,”  
“Well…too be fair,” he made a point to dramatically look around the apartment building, as if the fading gray paint and the broken doors was something to behold of, “It’s not much of a house,”  
“Bye,” she tried to close the door. Julian stuck his boot out to keep her from closing the door, he re–opened it by himself and walked in. now getting mud all over the floor. Dani cursed.  
“Watch your language Daniela! You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Julian said with his stupid smile and his stupid voice. Michelle glared at Julian, she said something in Kinyarwanda, and she knew it was most likely a negative thing in reference to the random boy with the muddy boots in their living room.  
“Who’s that?” she said, this time in Spanish.  
“an idiot who’s about to leave,” she tried to push Julian away, and silently indicating to him that now was not the best time to talk to her mother about anything. Michelle knew nothing about Dani and the Independence party, only that she strongly supported them. Michelle supported the cause but hated the organisation. So Dani had spent several years carefully separating her home life from her rebellious one.  
And Julian was here to force them together  
“Actually, I need to talk to you, Mrs. Lopez,” Julian sat at their couch  
So he was going to stay.  
“About what?” Michelle still stood, her arms crossed in front of her chest, she had her blazing look, and she was tempted to kick Julian out. Dani desperately wanted for her to kick Julian out.  
“The selection, and Dani,” Julian smiled his stupid crooked smile, “the independence party needs her for a mission”  
Dani groaned in frustration, she resisted the urge to pull Julian from the couch and out the door. She had to watch her mother’s slow change in expression as Julian talked; First confusion, then concern, then outright fury. Julian refused to shut up and kept talking, revealing years of IP activity that Dani kept secret. He praised her for some key missions, the most dangerous ones; robbing governor’s houses, violent riots, peaceful protests meant to provoke the police and Michelle’s glare shifted to Dani, eyes bright with clarity as she seemed to have finally understood something.  
Julian finally got to his point:  
“We want Dani to act as a spy for us in the selection, we can nearly guarantee her place—“  
She had only gotten out of trouble yesterday.  
“No,” Michelle was oddly restrained, her hand was clenched into a fist,  
“Ma’am I’m not sure you understand,”  
“No,” Her voice cracked with restrained rage, “I will not have my daughter be your pawn—“  
“She is one of our most enthusiastic members, I’m sure she wants to do this, last night she even—“  
“Do you not know how to fucking shut up, Julian?” Dani snapped, “Mama, ignore him—“  
“I will talk to you later,” Michelle hissed, “And YOU—“ she grabbed Julian’s arm, pulling him up from the couch, “OUT,”  
“Ma’am I—“  
“I will call the police, I will report you and expose the IP.”  
“Ma’am you are being a little unreasonable here, were are guaranteeing her a place in the palace, contestants of the selection get monthly allowances sent to their families, and we’ll pay you more for your sacrifice—“  
“If Dani get’s caught she will immediately be sentenced to death, sevens don’t get trials, we don’t get second chances, and you want me to put my daughter in that sort of danger?” she stepped closer to Julian, and he finally looked afraid, “What kind of mother do you think I am? She shouldn’t even be a member of the IP! Who do you think you are, sending teenagers out on the streets to lead riots, to commit crimes? How little do you value life if you are willing to let me daughter waste it?”  
“If anything happens to you I’m sure the IP will compensate you generously,”  
Michelle’s nostrils flared, she took in a heavy shaky breath before belting out her following sentence: “MONEY CAN’T REPLACE MY DAUGHTER!”  
Julian looked back at Dani, who currently had her face in her hands. Everything was ruined, he should have spoken to her in private, he should have listened to her and left.  
He backed away.  
“I’ll let you two discuss this,” he left before Michelle could yell at him even more.

Michelle sat on the couch. Head buried in her hands. She said nothing.  
Dani leaned against the door, arms crossed, silently regretting everything. She said nothing.  
Michelle stood up after a long silent moment. She didn’t even look at Dani. She went to the room she shared with Jorge.  
“Mama—“ Dani followed, “Mama I’m sorry!”  
“Where were you last night?” Michelle asked, she finally looked at her daughter. She already knew the answer; she only wanted honesty.  
“Celebrating, we broke in to the governor’s house, stole information…”  
“How long?”  
“Ma—“  
“How long have you been lying to me?”  
Years  
“Mama, It’s for a good cause!”  
“Did you hurt anyone? Kill anyone?”  
“Mama!”  
“Why won’t you answer me?”  
She was at a loss for words. Dani had never seen such a desperate look on her mother’s face, her eyes reflected a lifetime of pain and sorrow, Michelle looked even more tired than ever.  
“Please let me do this,” she begged, “I’ve only done all that to help, Mama, I want to Free Mexico I want Maria and Jorge to have a future, I want you to be able to retire,”  
“No” Michelle turned away, she walked to the bathroom,  
“Mama please,” Dani followed her again, she stood behind Michelle as she went through the motions of getting ready for church; use the little makeup she had, wrap her hair in fabric she brought from Rwanda. Michelle made a show of each movement, trying to make it seem like she was actively ignoring Dani.  
“You get money every week, I get to see the capital, and if something happens the IP could get you out of Mexico, you could go home, or…or if I win I have direct access to the IP and the royal family…or I’ll find a rich husband—”  
“I want you to come to Rwanda with me, and you hate men,”  
“That’s what upper crusts do—Ma,” she took her mother’s hand, “I’ll be careful, I’ll run if I get into trouble, but I can’t go on knowing that I could help change our lives and set us free, and not. You always tell me to be strong and fierce and fight for what’s right—please”  
Michelle put down a makeup brush. It clattered in the sink.  
“I don’t want you to die,” Michelle said, barely whispering,  
“There is no way in Hell I’m letting no upper crust get me,”  
Michelle stared at the mirror, she was still avoiding Dani’s gaze, but she could still see here through the mirror. Her expression was unreadable. There was no furrowed brow of set mouth that even gave her a hint at what her mother was thinking.  
“Okay,”


	4. The Raffle

She sat on the roof of her building in quiet contemplation, at least as quite as it could get in Tepito; As always her neighbourhood was loud and energetic; the market was in full swing; she could smell street food grilling on makeshift grills, mixed in with cheap diesel car smoke and cigarettes. She heard shoppers negotiating loudly at kiosks, and street performers filling the air with pleasant music, and cheers from their audience. On Sundays they played godly music to match the churches and their choirs. The churches tried to play their music louder, to drown out the noises of Tepito; People laughed, they ran, they shopped, they wore their Sunday best and crowded into churches, she couldn’t see much of it, the kiosks were covered by bright yellow and blue tarps; to keep out the sun and whatever hovercrafts wanted to watch them.  
Usually she would join her neighbourhood in their chaos. Most sundays she browsed through the market and searched for discount goods with her tips from work, every once in a while she could afford a freshly grilled snack or but something nice for her brother and sister; plastic sunglasses painted with metallic paint for Jorge, fake jewels made from glass for Maria, or maybe an ironic touristy shirt that said: I survived Tepito, for all of them to laugh at.   
Sometimes she’d bump into an old school friend, or someone she met at a party, or she’d find Elena near work, they’d stroll through down town, and even dare to infiltrate the clean condo complexes of upper crust neighbourhoods. Elena always like to go the most exclusive gated communities, she admired the design of each extravagant mansion, she’d talk for hours about the history of marble columns, or how the large glass windows collected sunlight and made electric energy.

She couldn’t bring herself to do any of it.

She knew later she would hate herself for missing out on her one day off, the one day off before she’d be shipped off to the selection (maybe. She had to remind herself that it was a maybe). But her stomach churned with guilt, she felt as if she didn’t deserve to enjoy herself when her mom was probably worried sick. She was probably praying for Dani right now, pleading for safety and security and maybe an easy way out.  
It would be unfair for Dani to be having fun when her mother wasn’t.  
Michelle tried to act like she was fine; she left with a long goodbye and a series of bad jokes, mostly selection-related puns. Dani played along, she huffed and rolled her eyes as if the jokes annoyed her, she responded with bad puns of her own, and they continued that back and forth, with giggles interrupting their conversation, until Dani finally pushed her mother to the door. Dani told her to leave or she’d be late, Michelle gave her a low sweeping bow and imitated a northerner accent: “your highness”  
They both laughed, but Michelle’s smile was forced; her eyes stared straight on, terrified, the corners of her eyes didn’t wrinkle, she clenched her teeth instead of opening her mouth and belting out a laugh; she wasn’t fine.

Dani stood up. Sitting and sulking could only make her feel worse, she could feel her thoughts spiralling, the worst-case scenarios began to plague her mind; how exactly would this selection work? What would she have to do? Do they want her to plant devices? Break out prisoners? Assassinate the royals?  
Shut up  
She needed to move, she was frustrated and miserable, and even if she couldn’t allow herself to have fun she could at least turn in her forms.  
She climbed down from the roof. Her building wasn’t particularly tall, it used to be a single floor house, someone decided they wanted to layer the building the result was a crooked, 3 story building with suffocating small apartments for too many tenants. The materials that made up the main floors changed from apartment to apartment; there were some brick and mortal homes, or pure metal spaces. Dani’s apartment was mostly concrete. The whole place looked seconds from falling apart. There were even sleeping pods attached to the building. They we honeycombed shaped living spaced made up of a bed and a bathroom and a closet if you were organized enough. The stuck out of the stone structure like a metallic hive. 

Dani waded through crowded streets, bumping past people and dealing with a slew of curses whenever she stumbled. Since it was Sunday nearly everyone was off work, and on the streets, enjoying the market and the rays of midday sun shining on the earth, the streets were twice as crowded as usual. The crowds doubled the heat and tripled the smell, body’s radiated their own heat and the stench of sweat hung over each person. Dani could feel her shirt sticking to her with sweat; sunrays would peak through gaps of the tarps and burn the back of her neck. She was warm, sticky and people kept touching her by accident only adding to her discomfort. But the street musicians let energetic music waft through the air, she spotted people she knew; vendors who stuck to the same spot for decades, she saw children get indulged by parents and able to get something for themselves for once, she even saw a man buy an authentic looking diamond ring, whether for himself or a partner, Dani didn’t know, she just spotted a brief flash of joy on his face before he bought it. She smiled too; the energy of the people around her seemed to lift her spirits.  
On brighter days upper crusts would even dare try and venture through Tepito, which is where most of the markets revenue came from. They were easy to identify; lighter skin, hair, and eyes, cleaner clothes, more accessories and less likely to bargain, they even had accents, they spoke Spanish deliberately slow and with clear pronunciation and didn’t swear as much. Dani always enjoyed watching them try and act like they belonged; dressing down, butchering slang, and humiliating themselves by falling for scams, only to stand out like a sore thumb.  
Dani spotted a blonde woman at a discount designer bag kiosk, she must have seen the extravagant prices and assumed they were real but second hand, she tired to negotiate, but the vendor stuck to their price, and the woman gave up an outrageous amount of money for a fake purse  
It was a little cruel, but Dani enjoyed it anyways. It was the upper crusts who pushed her people to form their own markets and their own rules, it was only fair that upper crusts would have to pay for it.

Maybe later she would call Penny, she knew she could find her number in the phone book, or maybe grab Bruno and dig through the junkyard, Sundays were always so short, she should at least indulge her friends—  
She saw a familiar jacket disappear a head of her in the crowd; she stopped in her tracks, two people behind her, bumped into her. One called her a dirty cockroach, for surprising him. On a regular day that person would have a bloody nose, but Dani had her focus set on the jacket, and when she approached it, she put her arms around the shoulders of the owner of the jacket and said with deadly calm: “would you follow me to a quieter place?  
“Dani!” Julian exclaimed. He looked genuinely happy to see her, with his bright eyes and wide smile, “I was looking for you!”  
The sound of her mom’s dejected “okay” rang in her ears, her blood boiled.  
“Oh,” she hissed, it was all she could say without yelling at him, for injecting himself into her life, for making her mom worry, for changing her whole life. And he was smiling.  
She started to pull him into a nearby alley, with the noise of the Sunday market; Julian had to shout for her to hear him, drawing attention to both of them. He kept talk while she pulled him away:  
“Yeah, I wasn’t sure about going to your apartment, but Bruno said I could find you around here, anyways, Dani, we need to talk strategy about the selection—”   
She found an alley a pushed him against a wall, the noise didn’t seem to carry so much in the dark alley, the heat and energy of the market felt sucked away in such a secluded place,  
“—Really I think you should play up being a Mexican, northerners would love it, it makes them feel good when the token—“  
“How, fucking, dare you, you asshole,” She hissed, Julian blinked in surprise at her sudden change in tone, “We had a deal, you, and the IP stay away from my family, you don’t even look at them without my say so, and you pull that shit today?”  
“Dani, listen—“ he chuckled, he straightened himself, and met her eye-to-eye, he smiled at her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Maybe he was trying to be reassuring, or friendly, but she wasn’t having it, she jerked her shoulder away, like his hand was painfully hot. But It was her blood that was boiling.   
“I know you have a thing about bringing your family into this but they deserve to know, what if something happened to you?” he wasn’t smiling, for once.  
There it was, another pang of guilt, Dani forced it down and focused on her anger. She needed to think about Julian and how much she wanted to punch him in the face, not every single time she could have died, leaving her mom and siblings to wonder what happened to her, why she didn’t come home—  
“That’s not your call, Julian,” She took a step back, she didn’t have the energy to lecture him and intimidate him at the same time, “I’m sixteen, I can apply on my own, and whether or not you asked me to spy on the royals I would have. Besides, there’s no guarantee I get into the selection, I’m a seven, I—“  
“No you’re getting in, it’s almost certain,”  
She raised an eyebrow  
“I’m not lying, we’ve recruited a bunch of girls for the selection. We’ve bribed a thousand programmers, hacked a hundred servers, killed a few men and put in our own, this—this is bigger than you think,” Julian sighed, “I’m only know anything because my—“ he caught himself, and paused, “I have inside informants,”  
“Jesus Christ, this is a glorified pageant,”  
“It really isn’t”  
She waited for him to elaborate; he didn’t.  
“What ever it is, it’s my problem, you have no right—“  
“Look,” Julian interjected, “we weren’t alive for the other selections, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a really high stakes thing, we—upper crusts treated like some big political power grab, there’s a lot at stake if you win, upper crusts, especially twos, murder for a spot in the selection, if you get in, they’ll gladly murder you for not staying in your place,” he began to make his way out, she tried to block his way, to interrogate him more, but he shoved past her.  
“I get to stay at the palace for a few months and I bring back gossip, whatever happens, I have backup—“  
“You’re expendable Dani,” he turned to her, a flash of fear crossing his face. He really wasn’t smiling now, it was strange seeing the concerned way he pursed his lips, “we’re in a smaller group, and every person counts when we start protests or do other smaller jobs, that’s when you have backup. This is bigger, Politics is involved, the adults want you to bring in listening devices and check in regularly, that’s treason, that’s immediate death, if you get caught they won’t even let your mom bury the body.” he sighed, “you won’t have backup with this,”  
“Are you—?”  
“I’m not joking, I’m just trying to help,” he walked away, leaving Dani’s stomach churning again.  
She may have bitten off more than she could chew.

For the next week Dani couldn’t escape the selection. On the walk to work the hover screens flashed images of the royal family, the stared down at her from he illuminated elevated spot. Street vendors gossiped and traded info and deals on the selection. It was quite common for bets to be placed on which famous family would have bribed their way to the selection, so called “hackers” would swindle a desperate family out of their money with guarantees that their daughters would get into the selection. Dani found herself shaking the money out of those hackers; no one deserved to starve for false hope. None of them would be getting into the selection.  
The system in place started with online and manual submissions, you could only apply once, and sign the papers once, any attempt at repeat submissions for a better chance would automatically get you disqualified. The system would randomly select 100 candidates per province, then each candidate would have to go through intense screening; criminal background, gang affiliation, school grades, community engagement, etcetera, to see if they weren’t dangerous. After that was a televised raffle; names were written on round balls, a tall gringo model would spin it in front of the whole kingdom and pick thirty-five random candidates.  
The screening should be where Dani would be disqualified; she dropped out of school at 14, she had virtually no volunteer experience—her time with the IP would hardly count—and while she didn’t have a criminal background, the large red 7 stamped on all of her IDs painted her as such, she was a kor and a dark skinned foreigner; a beggar, a thief, stealing work and abusing benefits for illeans, ugly in the eyes of northerners and several social levels below upper crusts and manties.   
This was were the IP cut in: whatever they did, she knew she was guaranteed a spot in the selection, or, at least a significant advantage, she knew they messed with the lottery to get her in, she knew they sped her through the screening process, whether by giving her fake credentials or by having all the requirements disregarded. The one wild factor was the actual final raffle. She was told there were many other IP planted candidates in case something went wrong, but there would be hundreds of names in that ball and only one of her.

Finally it was the day of the announcement: Tepito was unusually quiet, like one of the abandoned piles of rubbles eights would live in; normally Dani could hear the sounds of bustling citizens; chatter, screams, people loudly advertising bootlegged goods, the putter of broken down hover cars threating to crash into an unsuspecting apartment, police, both robotic and human, invading homes for random sweeps or dragging out the breadwinner of a house for conspiring against the crown; the sounds or an ordinary day. No one was allowed outside; the stalls were closed, people were forced to find any shelter with a screen, regardless if you had a home or not. The selection announcement was a mandatory broadcast, the government assigned screens switched on without any warning, all channels would play the Ilea capital report, the hover screen outside would play transcripts of the announcement; there was no escape.   
At least she was with her family, her mother was legally not allowed to take on the night shift, school was cancelled so Jorge and Maria where at home all day, Dani had the day off, Bruno called early in the morning, Juan had decided he’d treat Bruno with a day off and bonding time. Dani slept until it was almost noon and spent the rest of the day playing with her siblings.  
Dani sat on the floor with her hand extended, Maria was slowly painting her nails with cheap watery nail polish, Jorge was on his knees behind Dani, trying to braid her hair, he made her spend most of the morning combing out the knots, and spent the rest of the day styling it.   
“When we’re done all the girls will be after you,” Maria said, “green is totally your colour,”  
“I’m gonna put blue ribbon in your hair,” Jorge said, “blue’s the best,”  
“No, Jorge, you need to think about how it looks on her, get a green ribbon”  
“I like blue,”  
“But it makes her look purple! She has a cool-ish skin tone and green warms her up and it makes the amber in her eyes stand out,” Mariah smiled jutting her chin out with pride, “yesterday in art we were learning about colour theory, so I know how she should look,”  
“My eyes are black, Mari, there is no amber in them,” Dani said, Jorge nodded in agreement, and nearly yanked out a piece of hair with his enthusiasm, Dani cursed,  
Maria and Jorge both paused, they looked at each other with wide eyes, and Maria was giddy.  
“I’m gonna tell mama,” Maria sang  
“No you’re not or I’ll tell her about stealing her shoes,” Dani sang back  
“Do that and I’ll tell her about when you were out all night with that girl,”  
“And I’ll tell her about your science homework!”  
Maria gawped at Dani, her eyes full of betrayal, “but you did it for me!”  
“If I go down you go down with me,”  
Dani knew neither of them would snitch, Jorge however did not:  
“Dani you’re a devious little shit,” he said.  
Dani had no idea if that was a complement or an insult. she was too shocked. Maria and Dani shot their brother matching looks of disbelief. It was a little jarring hearing an 8-year-old curse. Maria started snickering, while Dani still processed. She was never going to swear at home ever again.  
The TV switched on without any warning, the Illean national anthem played at an unholy volume, the poor speakers in their box television hummed loudly with. Jorge jumped yanking at Dani’s hair again, and Maria jerked, painting her whole arm in green. Dani let out a stream of shocked curses.  
“Oh! Is the selection starting?” Michelle walked in, Dani scrambled upwards, praying silently that she didn’t hear anything, “muchkins stand up, you know they’re watching!” she added with a hiss  
She was joking. Dani found all the cameras and the listening devices in their home years ago, she asked Elena to mess with the cameras so the visuals were fuzzy and would freeze often. Elena broke enough listening devices so their voices would sound static.   
Still, joking about the cameras was the best way to get Maria and Jorge to behave. They both rushed to stand, Maria put her nail polish covered hand over her heart, and Jorge did the same except with a fist full of hair and blue ribbon. They all stood like proud illeans, watching the flag wave on their screen. They knew the words, they had to sing it at school and at church, but they didn’t sing along at home.  
The anthem finished, the logo for the capital report spun on screen, and they sat on the couch.  
Finally  
The report began as usual, the two newscasters they always say in their shimmering suits talked about the news all over the country, they covered each province and territory, speaking about larger events. In California there was a forest fire, but it was managed by the royal firefighter brigade, in Carolina a new governor was elected, she smiled at the camera she wore an expensive looking white dress with sleeves that dragged onto the floor, her hair was piled up into a twist, with what looked like white berries decorating it. In Texas suspected drug cartel members were arrested, in the photos they were a group of dark skinned hollow eyed kids, painfully skinny and dirty. They must have not eaten for days, the newscast said they were funnelling drug when crossing the province boarder of Mexico and Texas.  
Dani had met actual drug traffickers, they didn’t have the same gaunt face and malnourished bodies, these people were sevens or eights arrested for looking too poor.  
Michele touched her forehead her shoulders and her chest in a cross formation, she whispered a quick prayer, in her language. Dani didn’t know much of it, but she knew enough to understand that Michelle was giving thanks for her factory work and Dani’s decent paying job.  
The report continued, moving from province to province with more propaganda news. Then they moved on to fluff pieces. Jorge was bored at this point and started moving back and forth between Dani’s lap and Michelle’s,   
“When does the selection start?” he whined  
“Shut up they’re talking about Tessa Tramble!” Mariah reached to nudge Jorge, she ended up nudging Michelle’s face.  
Everyone knew about Tessa Tramble, her life story was something they told in school to inspire lower caste kids. She was once a five, the daughter of bakers, she had a good childhood but a great talent: singing. She took voice lessons from the Internet, she taught herself how to play the piano at the local church, she read and wrote poetry and put them to music and sang as much as she could. Eventually during a school concert, or something, a record producer found her, signed her for a record deal immediately and she rose in fame and fortune. Eventually she was rich enough to apply for a caste re-assignment, and the government decided she was valuable enough to become a two; the richest, most respected caste.  
Dani remembered her music teacher saying that Dani could work hard enough to become the next Tessa Tramble, she was enthusiastic and hardworking, she could do anything.  
There was a fundamental flaw in all of that; Tramble had resources Dani did not; unrestricted internet access, a church with a good enough piano to practice on for free, a regularly re-stocked and renovated library, and a neighbourhood prestigious enough that a record producer would just happen to swing by a local concert, free time to devote her time to music. Dani had none of that. Caste climbers could only climb because of wealth and luck, she’d never even heard of a caste climber who started out as anything lower than a five.  
Maria adored Tramble, regardless, her mission in life was to be a fashion designer, or an architect, or both, she figured, if she worked hard enough in class she could make it. Dani never told her otherwise. She never told her sister that the reason why Tramble rose so high so fast was because she was a five, who looked like a Two: tall, lean, pale with amber hair. Just looking like and upper crust could get you far in life. Maria at least had the advantage of inheriting her fathers lighter softer heart shaped face and his green eyes, some time Maria was mistaken for a five, and she didn’t even have to show her ID card to get somewhere  
Dani just hoped that one day she’d make enough money to send Mariah to a fancy university, or find her a good internship, Mariah was skilled in art and in math, and she looked the part, she could go far  
The Tramble story was about her benefit concert in Columbia, it was supposed to raise money for the lower caste citizens in Mexico; home to the largest population of sevens and eights. Dani knew her family would receive a single cent of that money, half of it would go to their governor, the rest was probably going to go to Tramble’s next elaborate set of costumes.  
The newscast ended with a short rendition of the Illean anthem, the flag showed itself once more and the selection began.  
The program started with a TV presenter, in typical lavish upper crust clothes; a fine white suit with silver embroidery crossing the jacket, a high collar and jewellery handing off his ears. He sat behind a white curved desk; the background was the skyline of the capital, D.C.  
“Hello! My name is Gavril!” he said, he had a plastic smile; he flashed his teeth and the corners of his mouth turned up, but the rest of his face didn’t react, there were no wrinkles in his face, his cheeks seemed set in place  
Gavril began to explain the selection, smiling the whole time, staring dead eyed into the camera: hundreds of years ago, there was unrest in Illea; the people felt they weren’t represented in the government. To prevent a rebellion that could “damage the great unified illean provinces” the royal family changed the system of government; instead of appointing governors, the people could vote for them, provide they were approved by the royal family. To give people a better chance at climbing castes the selection began as a way to randomly bring ordinary citizens to the capital to intern as future government workers, but the selecting changed over time as too many people would drop out or return to their old lives, so they gave selected people a chance at becoming royal, and thus the selection as they knew it was born.  
Dani could smell the bullshit from a mile away.  
The selection wasn’t random, and she knew the government wouldn’t listen to anyone if they came and shouted in the king’s face. She wondered what the real story of the selection was, maybe it was to give the people a false sense of hope; that maybe one day they’d be a part of the royal family and they could have power and security.  
Gavril moved from his desk to a stage, the skyline behind him shifted to show the royal family. King Clarkson sat with is wife in a velvet love seat, he looked like every portrait Dani had ever seen; ashy blonde hair, dark brown eyes, that seemed to smile when he wasn’t, the rest of him, however radiated power and statues in the worst way. His rectangular angular face was tilted up, like he was looking down at the kingdom, he was handsome in a sculpted way, looking well into his fifties in a calculated way, the wrinkle in his brown was perfect, the smile lines were perfect every wrinkle look like it was strategically placed. Queen Amberly was just as snooty as her husband. She had long auburn hair braided and twisted with flowers, a paler hear shaped face, and a longs gowns that seemed to shift between violet and blue when she shifted, she smiled at her husband, but was the same plastic smile with dead eyes. Maxon sat across from them, but turned to face the camera, a mirror image of his father, but younger, and a little more vulnerable, he looked softer, but it was probably the age, Dani had no doubt that in a decade or so he’d acquire the strategically placed wrinkles.  
At first Dani though the royal family was just an image, perfectly posed to present to the masses; the shifting of the queens dress was just a part of the image, but then Maxon shifted in his chair, and the rest of the royal family came to life.  
“Welcome, your highnesses,” Gavril bowed, “prince Maxon,”  
Maxon waved, flashed a brief smile and shifted again. The queen shot him a glare, and he stopped shifting, and breathed, looking a little more natural and relaxed.  
Was he nervous?   
“Nervous, Prince?” Gavril asked, Dani couldn’t tell if he was teasing or trying to ease the tension, personally she would have found it more interesting if Gavril provoke the royals.  
“Only a little” Maxon said, “but excited too, I suppose, I can’t wait to meet these lovely ladies,”  
“We all can’t wait!” Gavril announced, “your highness, Queen Amberly, as a former member of the selection do you have any thing to say?”  
The queen turned to the camera, god her eyes were creepy, “yes, be yourself, girls, there’s no point in pretending to someone you’re not for the prince. We all just want to fall in love,” she looked at Clarkson, “If Maxon and you are right for each other, then everyone will know,” she put a hand over Clarkson’s heart, he held it fondly and smiled at Amberly.  
“Life love and the pursuit of happiness, that’s all we want for our son,” Clarkson added.   
Gavril cooed at the happy couple, “isn’t that sweet, it’s a good thing the prince has such an amazing family to learn from,”  
A model walking into the studio, she was had dark hair and wore a simple black dress with a single puffed up sleeve that was larger than her face. Behind her a giant clear ball filled with smaller balls rolled in on is own. The clattering of the balls seemed to have brought the royal family out of their romantic stupor; they stared back at the world.  
“Enough of that, it’s time to pick the selection!” Gavril raised his arms; confetti fell down; music started to play/ they were suspenseful violins, the melody slowly started to rise.  
The ball rolled, the smaller balls clattered inside, the model stood, with her hand on her hips smiling, dead eyed and plastic like the queen and Gavril.  
“Are they robots?” Jorge asked. Mariah and Michelle shushed him. Dani leaned towards him and whispered, “They probably are, they definitely don’t speak like humans, and who wears a suit like that?” Jorge giggle.  
Finally the ball stopped rolling. The model reached into the ball and pulled out the first name.  
“Marlee Tames, Kent, four,” she announced, the picture of a sweet faced blonde showed up with her caste below her. The model picked another, “Elaina Stoles, Texas, three”  
“Fiona Castle, Carolina, three,”  
The model continued saying each name and their region and cast, Dani noticed that every single girl was a five or higher.  
Not surprising.   
With each girl was another photo, they all looked well put together and attractive in the typical northern style; most were pale skinned and had their hair arranged in typical upper crust style; up but with variating decorations. She saw a few outlier ins terms of looks, the few fives she noticed were distinctly southern, with light brown skin, and darker hair usually tied back.   
The model went through each girl, Dani’s name wasn’t mentioned at all, and she finally breathed. Maybe the raffle was random, it was the one thing the IP couldn’t breach, It was practically over now, and since she wasn’t going, she might as well find other ways to serve the IP, her mind might even be happier about it.  
“Daniela Gahima-Lopez,” her picture came up, “Mexican Province of the Paloma Territory, seven,”  
She froze.  
her whole family froze.   
Before erupting into cheers


	5. Finally

They came in the middle of the night, pounding on her door, likely waking up everyone on their apartment floor. Tepito was full of light sleepers, but they still wanted to sleep.  
Dani rolled out of bed, exhausted, irritated and afraid, her heart in her throat, her bat in her hands and her mind full of complaints; She had work tomorrow, she should be asleep. She opened the door, ready to swing, and saw Julian looking back at her, probably equally exhausted and frustrated.  
“Oh, hi,”  


Beside Julian was a taller, older, pale man, probably in his 40s, holding a suspicious looking briefcase, dressed in a fancy trench coat and scarf, despite the fact that it was usually warm and humid outside.  
She kept her bat aloft, “Who’s this guy?”  
“I go by Castile, in IP circles,” The man stepped closer, if Dani weren’t in the way he would have made it inside, “We’re here to talk about the selection, may we come in?”  
Dani quickly looked him over, the trench coat would have hidden any visible weapons, he was much larger than her, but she had a bat and was much angrier, the odds would be in her favour.  
She glanced at Julian, she didn’t trust him a lot, but she trusted him more than Castile  
Julian nodded  
She stepped back and they walked in. Castile started examining the apartment, with just a glance it seemed like he was picking apart each couch and each kitchen appliance with great interest. Julian found a chair and sat in it, looking down at the floor.  
“So what do you want to talk about?” She shut the door, but stayed near it, she watched Castile pick up a plaster figurine Jorge made. He examined it like it was some precious jewel.  
“The basics; objectives, tools, how to communicate, but first—tea?” Castile finally put down the figurine, loosing interest, he now had his sights set on the kitchen.  
“No,” She crossed her arms, she wasn’t about to serve tea to the strange man in her home and the boy she currently hated, “we have to boil water in the pot and it takes long,”  
“Of course, I understand you can’t afford certain—“ he looked around again, with less interest and more condescending amusement, “amenities,”  
So he’s a fucking upper crust.  
She could tell by the look he gave everything in her home; amusement, a little bit of pity, he was looking down at Dani like she was an animal in the zoo; something foreign and unusual to coo at. She didn’t think the IP had upper crusts in them. The thought filled her with mild disgust; they were fighting upper crusts, not working for them.  
“So what do you want?” she growled  
“They’re coming for you tomorrow, probably in the evening, so you should say your goodbyes soon,” Julian finally looked up from the ground, “you don’t need to go to work, so you should pack as soon as possible,”  
“We can’t ask you to take usual cameras and listening devices with you, although, now that I see you I’m beginning to wonder if we could put something in that hair…”  
The following silence was filled with Julian and Dani giving each other looks to communicate their thoughts. Dani said ‘I’m going to kill him’ with pinched eyebrows and her mouth agape, like she wanted to form the word but her voice caught, Julian said ‘I’m so sorry I can’t believe he said that,’ with pursed lips and desperate eyes.  
“People have—searched her hair before,” He said. Dani was a little grateful he spoke up; she would have said something.  
“Unfortunate,” Castile finally sat down, shooting the kitchen one more amused look, “but I’ve beaten around the bush enough today, It’s time to get down to business.” He set the briefcase to the ground, with a click the case opened itself, and Castille took out a slick black computer. Dani’s eyes widened, she’s only seen them in commercials and in the hand of uppercrusts, they were thousands of dollars apiece, something Dani could never afford unless she wanted to go into serious debt and starve.  
“This will be your direct line of communication to us,” Castile explained, wearing a giddy smile, “I designed this myself; thousands of encryptions make it almost impossible to hack, this is where you will send information, during your time in the selection, I advise taking any digitised documents too, just in case, everything you send will go to our base in DC, it has its own private internet connection; every message you send will be untraceable too”  
He held up a small black jewellery box, “we also have some unconventional devices, a woman on our team though it would be useful to make you family heirlooms, so earrings that record up to five hours of conversation, a necklace with a small camera with four hours of memory, a bracelet that can turn into a knife another necklace that has a memory stick, etcetera. They won’t be detectable in metal detectors because of the metal around the actual device. You’d have to clear the cache every once in a while, you should send all information, however insignificant to us, and if you miss anything you fill in the blanks with a formal report  
“Is there anything else you have? A secret gun that shoots lasers?” she said dryly  
“No, Take this seriously Daniela, now please sit, there’s a lot more I have to say.”  
She scowled, she wanted to stand just to spite him, but she sat on the arm of Julian’s chair.  
“Firstly what you’ll be doing in the palace is basic information gathering, we don’t need too much, just try and eavesdrop on any meetings, most government work takes place in the palace, and you’ll have unrestricted access to some very powerful people, and don’t underestimate your competitors, most of them come from rich families, and they know just as much as the government.”  
“So that’s it?” Dani looked back at Julian, smirking, “I just snoop around and eavesdrop?”  
“No actually, there’s much more; one of the contestants is the niece of a high ranking military official in, what Illea calls “new Asia”” he put air quotes around the words, “Illea has a rocky relationship with this continent, we want to see if we can ally ourselves with them. We also want access to the palace,”  
Castile paused; he looked at Dani with anticipation. Was he waiting or a response?  
“Wait, what do you mean access?”  
“We want you to get as many IP operatives inside the palace, we’ve been trying to get to it for years, but we can never get past the wall, this is the riskiest part of your mission, we’ve made arrangements to keep you in the selection for as long as possible, The government will keep you on for at least four months, to make it look like you’re competitive, they’re banking on Kore approval, so don’t mess up.” Castile gave her a dark look, “we’ve put a lot of money and pulled a lot of strings for this opportunity,”  
She didn’t look at Julian, but she could feel his triumphant arrogant smirk.  
“What happens if I get caught? What are your backup plans?”  
Castile wasted no time; he stood when she ask her first question, leaving the computer on the ground, “send us intelligence we’ll work on extraction should the need arrive, come on son,” Julian go up.  


Translation: you’re on your own 

She closed her hand into fist then opened her palms, letting the brief flash of frustration pass when she let go of the fist. So Julian was right all along. She didn’t know if she should tell her mom or lie and say the IP promised to protect her.  
God what if she did die?  
Julian briefly squeezed her shoulder reassuringly as he left, his expression said ‘you’ll be fine, I hope’ with sad eyes and a matching sad smile.

The next day She didn’t go to work. She called the garage, over the buzz of the ringing phone she silently prayed Bruno would answer; instead Juan Jose growled that she woke him up. The conversation was short and not nearly as awful as she anticipated, over the phone and sober Juan Jose wasn’t…evil. He gave her the day off, with no pay, and said he wouldn’t guarantee her job back after the selection, especially if he could find someone who worked for below her wage. She expected nothing less from him and was satisfied with not getting yelled at.  
She spent the rest of the day saying her goodbye’s, first by cooking breakfast for her siblings and packing her moms lunch; fried eggs were a little risky, they were pricy, but Dani felt like treating her siblings. Then she entertained them all morning, they went out back to the makeshift soccer field they had at the back of their building. It was Jorge versus Dani, Mariah was a viscous goalie and referee, and then she walked them to their uncle Diego’s house.  
When he greeted Maria he called her: “a little angle and the spitting image of your father!”. When he spoke to Jorge he called him “a strapping young boy about to change the world!”. When he spoke to Dani, he said, “You look just like your mother,” as if Michelle was the scum beneath his shoe.  
The visit was short an unpleasant. She was glad to say goodbye to Diego. She was not glad to say goodbye to her siblings.  
“Why can’t you stay with us? You have the day off!” Jorge said, clinging to her shirt  
“Yeah but I have to pack and see my friends,” Dani explained, she reached to hug him back but he tore himself away  
“You like your friends more than us,” Jorge pouted,  
“That’s not true, I love you guys I just—“ Jorge ran inside his uncle’s house, he didn’t even look back at her.  
Maria hugged her for a long time, “will you be home when we get back?”  
“I don’t know,”  
“Okay, I’ll watch Jorge for you, I’ll tell him you said bye properly,” Maria had her head buried in Dani’s chest, probably to hide the tears.  
“I love you Mariah, when I get back I’ll take a week off work, promise,”  
Maria left her and looked back once with an attempt at a smile.  
She went back home and packed her most presentable clothes (she had two sets of clothes not ruined with oil stains and dust, aside from her church clothes) and the computer. She was about to leave carrying the bag with her.  
She hesitated.  


Her bag was practically empty; she didn’t pack anything comfortable. She went back to her room, and grabbed her bat. She also took an old piece of brightly coloured patterned fabric. Michelle said that she used to warp the fabric around Dani and around her to carry Dani when she was a baby, she always used it as a makeshift blanket when Maria stole hers, it felt right to carry it with her.  
Her final stop was work, she went through the garage entrance, where Elena would most likely be working and Bruno would be talking. She entered, and spotted her friends doing nothing at all, there was no car to work over, no android or drones to fix, nothing to construct; It was one of their few easy days. Neither of them noticed her hanging by the back entrance. They were talking, and laughing. Bruno seemed to be going on a long spiel about history, Elena smiled at him, and corrected him or asked questions when she could.  
Dani waited for either of them to notice her standing by, they wouldn’t stop looking at each other and smiling as if the world could never interrupt them.  
“Hey,” she said, interrupting them, “Are you guys done gazing into each other’s eyes?”  
Bruno groaned. Elena smiled wider.  
“Shut up, like we haven’t had to endure you and your girlfriends,” Elena walked over and hugged Dani, squeezing the breath out of her, so she couldn’t speak, “are you leaving now?”  
“No—I—I can’t breathe—“ Elena let go, “I’m supposed to leave at night, I think. Just wanted to say bye,”  
“Well the…Don’t punch the prince, or the king—don’t punch anyone,”  
“No promises,”  
“At least snag something expensive if they kick you out,”  
“El—“ Dani cast a pleading glance at Bruno, wait did any of them know? “I’ll get you something shiny when I take down the monarchy.”  
Elena blinked. Bruno looked up from his computer.  
“Oh,” Elena scoffed with mild displeasure, “you’re doing something for the IP…of course,”  
Dani gave her an apologetic shrug  
“If you die can I get your third of the tips?” Bruno asked  
“No, Elena gets my money,” Dani grinned  
“Cause she needs it?”  
“Cause she’s cooler than you” She put an arm around Elena, “Tips are for cool people,”  
“Okay, fine, if I’m going to be insulted in my own house, I’m glad to see you go,” he went up to Dani and hugged her anyways, “seriously, don’t punch the prince, he has a very punch-able face,”  
“I know,”  
“Seriously, don’t get angry or rant or lecture—”  
“I know,” Dani, groaned, “I have common, sense, I have to go now.”

She went home and waited.  
And waited.  
And waited.  
She was left restless. She watched the tie tick by on their microwave clock, and watched the sun slowly creep through the sky. She packed all the rest of her clothes, just in case. She swung her bat experimentally, all that energy needing some sort of outlet. She cleaned whatever needed to be cleaned, then made another mess by cooking dinner for everyone when they got home.  
By late afternoon, no one came for her. She sighed and collapsed on the couch. If she’d known she had this much time she would have stayed with Jorge and Maria, she would have dealt with her uncle and made her siblings happy. She watched another fifteen minutes pass and called her uncle’s house. The phone rang, but no one answered, she couldn’t even leave a message. She tried twice more, but there was no answer.  
She sighed and collapsed on the couch, again.

Finally someone knocked. By then Dani was weary from waiting and irritated because she couldn't call her own family, she left out goodbye notes with the dinner, but she would have preferred them to be there with her. Maria would be excited and running for the door, Jorge would join her and ask a thousand questions.  
Two men in dark suits stared down at her when she opened the door. Black reflective visors mostly covered their faces; their expressions a little too blank to be alive, their skin was a little to pale to be human, their bodies a little too still to be alive, but the detailed strands of dark, close-cropped hair and the deep realistic lines of the faces made them look a little bit human. A red haired woman in a white suit followed the men. She appeared seemingly out of nowhere, stepping in front of the men despite not being there a minute ago. She could have behind one of the men. Still….  
The woman smiled at Dani she had clear green visor hovering over her right eye. The woman spoke to Dani in English.  
“You must be—,” she paused, write text scrolled through the visor, “Danielle Lopez?”  
“ _Daniela_ , _Gahima_ -Lopez, but yeah, I’m the one you’re looking for,”  
The woman clicked her tongue disapprovingly, “that’s a very foreign name, and a very strong accent…I’m Gabby Raven, I’ll be your guide on our journey to the capital, and you’re transition from this—“ she glanced around the apartment, nose wrinkling in disgust, “to palace life,”  
“Okay, let me just get my stuff,” Dani said  
“No need, Danielle, we know of you…” another dramatic condescending pause, “…insufficient funds, clothing and other items will be given to you so you may be presentable for the cameras and the royals,” she looked around once more, “Its a good thing we aren’t filming home life,” she muttered  
“I have some stuff I wanted to bring, anyways,” she grabbed her bag from the couch, “I’m ready Gabby,”  
“Please call me Miss Raven,”

Everything else happened quickly Dani barely had time to process. The men practically dragged Dani out of her home; she barely had the chance to lock behind her. They put her into a sleek black hover car.  
And they drove well above Tepito. Dani watched her neighbourhood shrink below and fade away in distance. They traveled on the high ways through Mexico City and outside her home.  
“Where are we going?” Dani asked Ms. Raven  
“An airport, now here is what you need to know: you will be temporarily bumped up  
to a three, because you need access to places and resources sevens aren’t allowed,  
Remember this is temporary, we will photograph you for a new ID card after your  
makeover. Every move you make will be recorded, so be on your best  
behaviour. You are not allowed to be physically violent with anyone at the palace or  
You will be eliminated, you must not be rude to the royal family or you will be  
Eliminated, you must not sabotage the contestants or you will be eliminated.  
Breaking the law in any way is a direct affront to the crown especially in the  
Selection, and would be punished with upmost severity,”  
“I—“  
“I’m not finished. You may not engage in any relationships with anyone aside from the prince, so no fraternizing with guests of the palace or with guards. The timeline of the selection varies but it is always under a year, the prince must make his decision by fall next year, until then your family gets compensation for every two weeks of your absence” a number flashed on her visor, Dani’s eye’s watered with the enormity of it. almost three times her monthly wage. Dani didn’t even need to do the math to weight the benefits. Her usual wage plus her moms was enough to pay the bills and buy the groceries (usually). Triple that every two weeks could let her family live very comfortably for a while, more food, more activities, or her mom would save it in case Maria made it to college—  
“Only as long as you are in the selection,” Miss Raven continued. Dani smiled to herself, she was guaranteed a spot for several months; her family would be set for a long time.  
“You can not leave the palace without an escort and permission from the prince, all your interactions outside of your room will be filmed, and if you reach the final ten, you will be an elite, by then you will interact more with the royal family and should you find proper employment, you may keep your caste. Now remember, You must please the audience, the royal family and the nobles, if you want to keep your place, Maxon is only one vote in millions that decide who the next queen would be, this is as much an election as it is a show, you will be given courses and reading material to compensate for your lack of higher education, and will be evaluated on such, so at least try to comprehend governing.”  
“I—“  
“As of now you are property of Illea any breach of the rules will get you eliminated and any breaking of the law will get you prosecuted, understand?”  
“Yeah, I—“  
“Good, we, will drop you off at the Paloma provincial airport, you will meet the contestants In DC.”  
Ms. Raven faded away, pixels shifted from white to blue before dissolving and leaving behind an empty seat. Of course she wouldn’t actually set foot in Tepito.

Dani spent the rest of her ride in silence, she tried to catch a final glimpse of Mexico City, but the windows were dark and they were moving fast. The distance between her and her home seemed wider now, it open a chasm in her heart.  
She didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to her mom.

They put her on a commercial flight, but it was practically empty, and she was pushed the front, in first class. Where no one else would interact with her, or maybe they were trying to satiate her surrounding her in comfortable reclining seats and large TV screen. Keeping the poor girl grateful to her benefactors.  
She was nauseous during take off and panicking during the first half of the flight. Her nails threatened to tear the leather armrests, the seat in front of her shook hard because she kicked it nervously. She had never been more than a few stories off the ground, in a building; she’d only rode in a hover car three times in her life. Now she was thousands of miles in the air, the plane could crash, she could die, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Her life was in the hands of a pilot she couldn’t see.  
She was going to hurl.  
Someone must have slipped a sleeping pill in her drink at some point. Dani remember watching a movie, with a plane crash featured in it, nearly jumping out of the plane, and then black.  
She woke up with a start when an android host gently shook her. She clutched her bag, the edges of the computer dug into her stomach.  
Right. That was there.  
The android smiled (or rather, the panels on its face shifted to reveal a row of perfect bleach-white teeth) and held her hand to lead her off the plane. It handed her off to the same men in suits as before. Dani didn’t remember them boarding the plane or anything; they must be robots. They lead her out the Terminal, one walked close behind her, and the other close in front; they towered over her and blocked her view of the airport. They walked at a brisk pace, forcing Dani to move quickly through the airport. She wanted to take a look, around the airport, she’d never even been to one outside of Mexico City.  
They found a lunge and left her there, the stepped in front of the door, leaving her the heavy impression she wasn’t welcome to leave.  
At least She finally had a second to breathe. She collapsed on the nearest plush white couch and gave herself a moment to look around her; beige walls, pearl white seats glass tables, a bar with criss-crossing support beams carrying all sorts of alcohol.  
What she wouldn’t do for a bottle of something cold and shitty.  
The ceiling stretched miles above her head, hovering glass screens flashed images of the royal family, smiling, waving; being pompous in general. If her friends were near they would have jokingly gagged at a photo of the king playing croquet; the asshole’s sport  
The clip-slop of heels alerted Dani to a new person in the lounge, the guards stepped away from the door, allowing Ms. Raven to walk in, it seemed this time she was there in the flesh  
“Thank God you made it before everyone else,” She sighed, “send Danielle to room six, she cannot be seen like this,”

Unlike everything else about her journey to the selection, the makeover was not quick. Each rrrriiiiiip of the wax strip was slow and agonizing, leaving her whole body burning, each pluck of an eyebrow hair last much too long. She heard other girls rushed over to different rooms, she only caught a glimpse of red hair or flying dresses through the crack of the door. Then someone pushed her back into her seat and slammed the door.  
She sat naked and vulnerable and shivering, the only thing she had left was the bag sitting in the corner of the room. She did everything in her power to keep her eye on it. Every inch of skin was on fire. The room was plush and soft pink with velvet settees and hair and makeup stations hastily put in place where a minibar once at and a closet where a bed must have been. A host of upper crust vultures circled her. They discussed her like she wasn’t there, and spoke to fast for her to understand, the few words she caught were worrying and aggravating.  
“Make her look…palatable,”  
“Bone structure…enhance,”  
“Dye…skin”  
“Exotic…chocolate”  
“Eyes”  
They made her sound like a plate of food  
“What are you going to do to me?”  
The leader of the vultures—and olive skinned man with bright blue hair—smiled. He reached to stroke her hair, she caught his wrist; he only chuckled.  
“Well, dear, we’re only discussing how to enhance your features, you’re so unique compared to the other contestants we just want you to fit in,”  
“You mean I’m the only black girl and you want to make me look more white?”  
The two other vultures chuckled and clucked, “how blunt,” the one with brown hair and yellow eyes said, the last vulture—one decked head to toe in pale pink, with pale pink skin—laughed even more.  
“Well, yes, essentially,” The blue vulture pulled back his hand, he waved a brush in Dani’s general direction, “you aren’t very regal dear, we need to make you more pleasant, to the audience and the royal family, starting with your attitude,”  
He tapped the end of the brush against Dani’s nose.  
This man must be fluent in patronizing.  
“We want to change you image, love,” pink vulture had an accent, must be from somewhere in Britain, “give you style, presence, make you look fit for royalty,”  
“I’ll take her,” the yellow eyed vulture placed his hands on Dani’s shoulders, “we need to work on her hair,”  
Yellow eyes dragged her to a chair and a makeup vanity. Polished white wood table with lights around a large mirror, nearly every inch was covered in dyes and hairbrushes and makeup. Yellows eyes gripped an alarming looking brush, it was definitely made for finer hair than what Dani had on her head.  
“Now,” yellow eyes played with her hair, “what do we do with this,”  
She had never been more afraid in her life

She thought the waxing and the plucking was bad, nothing was worse than watching yellow eyes try and comprehend how to style her. He looked through magazines for ideas, he pushed and brushed and lost a thousand combs and broke a thousand more. Another set of vultures flew in and did Dani’s nails, one pouted at the bitten down stubs of nails and sighed as she tried to file and shape whatever was left, another put a clear coat or polish then left. The blue vulture arrives and insisted of giving Dani a “facial” then plastered muck over her face, and ripped it off after half an hour, her face burned after just recovering from the first set of face-plucking.  
She was smoothed and buffed and polished and all that, yellow eyes was still playing with her hair.  
“I give up,” he said, “you’d look wild anyways,”  
He dragged her to another seat, pushed her head back into a basin and vigorously washed, hot water running over her face and her head nocked around as she scrubbed. He snipped off a solid inch or two of hair. She watching it fall on the ground. Yellow eyes then dried her hair, used a flat iron to style it, and when it was all over he wiped off the towel he had put around her shoulders and grinned  
“Can I—“  
Blue vulture burst in, hands full of powders and liquid liners, red faced and panting.  
“Are you done?”  
Yellow eyes sauntered out, something was wrong, it felt like a silk scarf was placed around her shoulders.  
Blue vulture stood in front of her, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face, examining ever inch of her face.  
“I can work with this”  
It was the least painful part of the whole makeover, yet the longest. Blue vulture powdered her face then painted her, then wiped it all off and tried again, he put foundation on her hand to test skin tone and experimented with blue/red/pink/yellow lipstick/eye shadow/mascara, then carefully outlined her features with the precision of a surgeon and blended it all in with the vivacity of a painter  
Blue vulture spun her chair around, he smiled at her and raised his arms showing off his prized masterpiece.  
“Voila”  
This was wrong.  
“What did you do to me?” The person in the mirror was foreign to her. The person in the mirror was soft looking with more prominent cheekbones and wide round eyes, she had an even, light skin tone, no sign of any scars or freckles or discoloration. Plastic.  
Her hair was in carful long waves cascading down her back on over her shoulders. She ran her fingers through it. No texture. No curl. Silky smooth.  
“Your original look was too difficult and wild,” blue vulture said with an air of superiority, “now you look beautiful! Your hair properly frames your face, you look just like everyone else,”  
She did not feel beautiful  
Dani forced down the frustration bubbling up within her. This was a part of the job, looking different will make it easier in the long run, no one would recognize her after this, no one would look for Dani after the selection, the person in the mirror would blend in, charm royalty and disappear when the makeup went away.

 

Finally. FINALLY she was left alone.  
Relatively alone.  
No one was picking at her face or tossing her across a plush pink room for a new form of cosmetic torture. The photo-shoot left her teary eyed from the flashes so she sat in one of the few chair in the corner and blinked away the tears. To think the start of the selection seemed liked the hardest.  
Another girl collapsed beside her, with a sleepy grin. She had on a white dress, the skirt long a billowy; she used a pair of white gloves to fan herself. She sighed she stretched. She turned to Dani and introduced herself, thrusting a hand to Dani.  
“My name’s Marlee Tames,” Dani already knew, she was virtually unchanged from her photo in the broadcast, her sunny gold hair just under her chin now and her round cheeks twice as flushed. Dani reluctantly shook hands.  
“you're Daniela, right? I saw you on the broadcast and you look a little different but I’m sure they use our ID photos then so obviously we’d have changed. You’re super pretty by the ways. I’m a little up north so I have no idea what Mexico is like. Its hot right? Right, cause its south. I’m super excited to be down here. I’ve Never traveled below my home town…”  
Marlee continued chattering, leaving Dani no room to answer and she was so.what grateful for that. She just leaned her chin on the palm of her hand and listened. Marlee switched from subject to subject jumping between talking about her favourite movie star to ask a million questions about Dani. She was very animated, she waved her arms, she tapped her foot, she made large clear expressions with her face, eye rows nearly flung off her face everytime she said : ” OH! That reminds me of…” that boundless energy came with warm and genuine questions. Sure dani couldn’t answer them but Marlee still seemed to desperately want to know everything about her. And MArlee was very enternating when she got lost in a circle of related stories, making an Exhausted Dani laugh a few times.  
“sorry I got waaaaay ahead of myself,” marlee said with a breathy sort of laugh, “I’m just like nervous and excited, ah! We're going to meet the prince! We're going to live in the palace in DC! My parents bought me a spot here for my birthday, you know? So I really want to make the most of it…but now" marlee placed her hands over Dani's arm, leaning I closer, suddenly wide eyed and serious, “Whay. About. You.”  
“what?”  
“Come on Daniela—super nice name by the ways—I asked you a million questions and you havent answered one!”  
“Call me Dani"  
“cute! Also mysterious, you’re still not answering,” she held a hand up before Danu could say anything about herself, with a growing expression of dawning realization, “you’re being all cool and mysterious then? That’s your strategy, cause you already have like this badass vibe, that’s so cool,”  
Dani chuckled, “Yeah sure,” it wasn’t like Marlee would give her the space to say anything more anyways  
Another girl sat next to Dani finishing up her photoshoot. And more followed. Dani noticed that each looked custom styled. They were outdated or umpractically extravagant clothes each “style” seemed to say something about the girl. Marlee reminded her of a debutant. Southern, old fashioned and sophisticated and constantly blushing. A girl named sofie was professionally clad in a sleek black dress, smoky eyed and inquisitive Elise, the four, was in all red, with her hair pulled up in chopsticks. She was the only one scowling.  
“oh, I want to say his to everyone else, do you mind if I go?”  
“go ahead,”  
“great, I will see you later, you have to tell me more about yourself later!” she went to a group already engaged in conversation.  
No one else made any effort to talk to Dani, and she was a little grateful for that, she had no interest in enterntaining any more upper crusts, she had enough of the vultures. The condescending glares she endured over the last few days still lingered in her mind. She’s lode it if anther person pitied her.  
She made her way to elise, the most interesting looking one, the scowls and the menacing glare she shot everyone gave Dani the impression she had something to say about Illea.  
Finally someone who might get her.  
“you look like you’re having fun,” Dani said as she sat next to Elise  
“what gave it away? My excited grin?” Elise huffed, she sighed, and stopped scowling, “sorry that was rude, I’m Elise,”  
“no don’t apologise! You were so cool a second ago!”  
Elsise smiled, “Okay, okay, I like you. But I do need to act like I like being here,”  
“you never know who's watching,”  
“right,” Elise plastered a fake smile, “so what brough you to the most pissed off girl in the room, tired of chatty?” she nodded towards MArlee, who was currently enternaiing a growing group of girls with a story.  
“Be nice, Marlee is sweet,”  
“I know, I’m just,” She groaned, “I’m horrible today—they put chopsticks in my hair, I forget what they said exactly, its something to do with the fact I'm chinese, oh sorry, in illeaa they call it new Asia. I was just so…fed up,”  
someone gets it  
“I hear that, I’ve been dealing with bullshit all day, and these people, just throw me around the place like I’m a doll, and called my life humble, and they way the look at me—ugh, I hate rich people,” she threw Elise a side glance, “no offense,”  
“none taken, we’re horrible,”  
they both chuckled  
“I think we’re gonna be great friends,”  
“oh yeah, complaining about racism is a great way to make friends, totally healthy,” they laughed again, only to be interrupted by doors slamming open.

the light of the studio shone in, hiding a dark silhouette  
The doors shut with an echoey bang, the sillouette was finally visible, and her entranced silenced the hall of chatty girls.  
She held her head high like she was already queen, she walked to find a seat. Her hips swayed with each fall of her three inch heels. With the silence of the room her footsteps were louder, clearer and drew more attention. She didn’t smile, but somehoe Dani knew she loved the attention. She must have cultivated that regal air, that focused stare ahead. Her ruby red dress shimmered in the low lights of the lounge, it matched the dyed daisy in her long chestnut hair and her cupid’s bow lips.  
For a moment Dani was dazed, then Elise woke her, whispering a softe wow.  
That must be Celeste Newsome, Dani had seen her everywhere; in ads in magazines, in TV dramas.  
She was intimidating, regal, and dangerous.  
Distractingly gorgeous.  
“Dani—“ Elise softly nudged her, “Don’t fall in love with her, that would be such a cliché,”  
“No I—I’m here for the prince,”  
Elise raised a disbelieving brow, she glanced around the room, the girls were quickly recovering from a devastating entrance and were returning to normal conversation, a little more hushed, now; The girl to beat had just entered.  
Elise looked back at Dani, with a curious hmm, and amused eyes.  
“okay, whatever,”  
Dani had to swear to herself there and then not to get distracted by anyone else. This was a competition filled with upper crust girls. They were pompous, they demeaned her, they benefited off a system that tore her and her people down. But Elise was nice, Marlee was cute and Celeste was…Celeste.  
Do not get distracted

They were carted off to the castle well after dark, it seemed Celeste’s photo-shoot cut into their tour time. The camera just loved her.  
another guide, lead them to their rooms, they were all crowded through the smallest most remote halls of the castle  
Quickly you can’t let the royal family see you.  
They were treated to a beta version of the tour they’d get the next day. It was mostly composed of gaurds and white and navy blue, with gold Illean insignias. They were pointed to the women’s Room, the designated area for the girls to hang out in when they weren’t entertaining the world, they saw the south wing and the north wing and a dozen Greek columns that supported…something.  
And that was it.  
The first episode of the selection would be filmed the next day, with a special on the girls, their own interviews and a formal meeting with Maxon.  
But first, they had to grab their new ID cards and Go To Bed.

She couldn’t sleep. No matter what she did she only felt more awake and more agitated, her body craved movement, but she forced it to lay still and try and sleep, leaving all the energy churning inside. Maybe it was the plane ride; she had sat for hours, and slept most of the way to avoid nausea, or maybe it was because it had been two days and she’d done nothing but sit and wait. Waiting during her travels, waiting to be summoned, waiting for anything to happen. She should be getting home with greasy fingers and dusty overalls; she should be feeling an ache in her muscles from the strain of reaching out to fix a car or from wrestling a faulty android.  
She had all this energy wasted on the selection.  
She gave up on sleep and hour into her tossing and turning. She never got at tour. She might as well explore.  
She changed from the flimsy nightgown to her old clothes, she doubted anyone else was awake, the sun set hours ago, and upper crusts tended to sleep easy; they had all the security in the world, they didn’t need to be alert 24/7. She padded through the halls, they were expensive looking in the way most things were; clean and empty, not a single painting of vase of flowers, the needless white columns and needles silver hexagons were the only decorations.  
Dani eventually found her way to the bottom levels of the castle, now it had a few portraits of historical figures dotting the walls. She never had the eye for art, but she noticed a lack of creativity in the portraits; white men in black/grey/blue suits, sitting or standing in some fancy room in the palace, though she did spot a painting or two with a splash of colour; red, and the most exciting sight was the white woman in a dress.  
Wow.  
She recalled the quick tour earlier, all they said was that she couldn’t use the front exit until she was told to, she remembered that much, but there was a back exit directly to the garden, somewhere.  
She found it, eventually, after startling a few cooks in the kitchen and tripping over a cat. The cat was fine. The back exit was a glass door that showed what lay behind it; a maze, rose bushes, a vegetable garden, fresh air.  
She flashed her new ID card at the scanner, it showed a three and flashed green. She would never forget the instant rush or pride she felt when seeing that three.  
God she was letting it get to her head.  
“Hey!” someone grabbed her arm, and wrenched her away from the door, and forced Dani to turn and face them. A guard stared down at her, his uniform was black, instead of the white and grey uniforms she saw earlier; must be the uniform for the night rotation, “what are you doing here?”  
“I’m just going to the garden,”  
“you aren’t allowed on the palace grounds,” Dani couldn’t’ see the guard’s eyes behind the visor, but his mouth was curled into a sneer, his nose wrinkled like he could smell something awful. Dani successfully wrenched her arm away.  
“No, I am allowed here, I’m a part of the selection!”  
“What’s going on here?” another guard appeared, this one stepped to close to Dani, not touching her, but she could tell he was about to grab her like the other. She backed away once more.  
“I’m just trying to go into the garden,” she deliberately kept her voice soft and low just to hide the panic. Her heartbeat was rapid; she held her breath.  
“Kors aren’t allowed on the place grounds, how did you get in?” the second guard grabbed her shoulder; the first one took her arm again. She struggled, to get out of their grip, but the each held tighter, even with the gloves she felt their nails digging in.  
“I’m not—I’m allowed here! I’m in the selection! I’m a three!” she tried again to reach for her ID card, but the second guard caught her arm  
“She’s reaching for a weapon!”  
Fuck, fuck, of course they think that. Blood was pounding in her ears, every heart beat was loud and painful. She managed to get free for a second, but they both grabbed harder, one tried to pin her writs behind her back. She yelled this time, maybe the camera would catch this, maybe a maid.  
Anyone, please.  
“I swear to god I’m supposed to be here I’m not a thief I’m just trying to get into the garden!” they slammed her against the wall. She stopped struggling now. What was the point? Her ID was on the floor now, under a guard’s boot, she barely had one night in luxury and now she was being arrested for going outside. Typical.  
She felt a mix of humiliation, fear and rage; she’d been there one night and was being manhandled worse than her typical brush with the police in Mexico. At least back home they knew her; they called her Dani instead of Kor and marched her home instead of pinning her to a goddamn wall.  
“Excuse me? What are you doing?” fantastic, another guard, another person to manhandle her. If she weren’t paralyzed by fear and by the guards she would have said something sarcastic.  
“Let her go immediately!  
Guards stopped. the second their grips loosened, she wrenched herself out of their hands.  
“She’s a daughter of Illea, a member of the selection! Apologise!”

  
She didn’t wait to hear the apologies, if they were even coming. She picked up her ID card, flashed it once more and went into the garden.  
She wanted to run, to burn off the anxious energy building up inside her, but her legs felt like putty, her whole body was at once filled with adrenaline but on the brink of collapse. She found a bench and sat. She was shaking. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. She clenched her fists, and unclenched them; she ran her fingers through her hair, only to remember it was thin and silky now, as she combed her fingers through it she noticed they didn’t get caught in curls. It only unsettled her more.  
She didn’t notice anyone next to her until someone put a hand on her shoulder, she tensed immediately.  
“Are you alright dear?” she looked over to her right, prince Maxon was sitting uncomfortably close. He was as summery and princely as he was on the TV, golden tan, dark, hair, a nose that belonged to someone with an: ‘III’ at the end of their name.  
He shifted closer and put his arm around her. She tense even more, sucking in a breath and bracing herself for…anything. She just didn’t want to be touched.  
“I’m fine,” She was not fine, her hands were trembling, she closed them into fists again.  
“I’m sorry about those guards, the night rotation must have not gotten briefed on the selection yet, I’ll make sure they apologise.”  
She never wanted to see those guards again,  
“I don’t think and apology would cut it,” she didn’t have the energy to lie and smile at the prince, “They fu—“ she paused, she breathed, she spoke again, “they assaulted me, they didn’t listen when I tried to explain,”  
“To be fair, my dear, they were only doing their jobs, anyone below a four isn’t allowed near the palace, and you don’t exactly look like a four”  
She shot him a look of disbelief; eyebrows pinched, and her mouth was half open, she was about to say something, maybe chew him out. She thought better of it. He was frowning like he was actually concerned, but she saw an amused glint in his amber eyes; the concerned wasn’t genuine.  
She was going to punch him; she swore she was going to punch him, if she could only stop shaking.  
Maxon’s arm felt too much like the guards’ iron grip. She moved a little, just enough to show discomfort. He still kept a hand on her knee.  
She was going to punch him.  
“I am, sorry, I understand the shock, if an apology won’t do, I’ll be glad to make it up to you, in any way,” Maxon smiled and patted her knee once more. He stood up. “I suppose it’s a good thing the cameras didn’t catch that, or this. I hope the rest of your stay is much more pleasant,”

Dani went back to her room. She could shake off the lingering ghosts of the guard hand and arms restraining her. Nails still dug her shoulder, her wrists were still pinned down, Maxon’s hand was on her shoulder, her knee and around her.  
She went to bed.  
She couldn’t sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't think croquet is the 'asshole's sport' i just thought it would be funny. rich people please don't eat me
> 
> edit: someone pointed out to me that there weren't any paragraphs. i guess AO3 formatted this a little differently, lol.


End file.
